


The Case of the Fleeing Frenchman

by PenelopeWaits



Series: Sailing Deep Waters [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Homophobia, M/M, Magic, Operas, Racism, Rating Changed, Romance, Sailing, Slow Build, Vanilla, just a bit, non-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:48:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeWaits/pseuds/PenelopeWaits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain James Watson and his son John have been protecting each other and their beloved Harriet for years.  Where will true safety reside when a handsome sailing ship and her haunted captain arrive and he makes a shadowy proposal?  This is a crossover with the myth of the Flying Dutchman.  John is Senta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Storm and the Calm

**Author's Note:**

> This story began this summer when I attended a quite sexy version of The Flying Dutchman at Glimmerglass Opera. It is a measure of how twisted by fanfiction my mind has become that, before the last note was sung, I thought, “This could be a Johnlock story!” The problem was, I have always despised Wagner. I know all the musicologist’s reasons that is absurd, but I find the man himself loathsome and so I can only barely tolerate his music. Still… It is Love! Tragedy! Redemption! Doesn’t that just scream Johnlock to you?
> 
> Sometime in the following weeks it occurred to me that writing well is the best revenge and that I could turn the story in a way that would have Wagner spinning in his grave. Here you have the result. If you are a Wagner fan, I apologize in advance; you might give it a try anyway. If you know nothing about Wagner or any opera don’t worry, it will make no difference when you read this. On the third hand, if you want to listen to the overture while you read, that’s ok too…
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiIDNlEP9KE
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> This is a work of fiction, not a manual on fishing, boat safety, sailing, Scottish tourism or magic. Liberties have been taken, although hopefully not abused. Please treat accordingly.  
> I do not own these characters or profit from their use. I just like to play in this sandbox. May you enjoy.

**Chapter 1 – The Storm and the Calm**

Sherlock woke at sunset from a restless sleep.  Tomorrow marked the end of seven years of emptiness and boredom.  In three days, he would face another cycle, seven more years of a horizon stretching three hundred and sixty degrees, seven years with only the violin for company.  Then there would be thirteen mewling voices of regret and disdain that snickered in his mind, instead of the present twelve.  Tonight at least would bring a few hours of entertainment and relief.  However doomed he was to failure, at least for a few hours life would not be boring.

=======================================

James Watson stood behind his pilot, the swells getting deeper as the sun set.  “Turn her around, Ewan, we’ll not make it into port tonight.  The southeast winds will have us on Horseback rock before we can reach harbor.”

“I’ll keep her about 40 kilometers out then.  The ferries won’t be running in this, but there’s no sense in taking chances.  You better put out a watch for running lights though,” said the old man.

“Aye, I’ll put boys fore and aft.”  Slipping from the relative comfort of the wheelhouse, the Captain kept one hand on the inner rail and tightened his pfd straps with the other.  Sixteen years ago a vest like this had saved his son’s life, if not his leg, and Watson was adamant his crew wear them when things got rough.  In this as in all else, he led by example.  He made his way down to cabin where the rest of the crew waited.

“We’ll not be getting in tonight, boys.  Ewan is taking us back out until morning.  We’ll hope the wind has slacked by then.  Don and Ken, grab the small radios, get yourselves on lines and head fore and aft.  Keep watch for the big boys.  There’s at least one freezer trawler out here with us.  Ross and I will take a kip and relieve you in two hours.”

Ken hopped to it but Don pulled a face and dawdled, just to make clear how he felt about the news.  In spite of that, Don said nothing, knowing his captain was right, however unpleasant the duty.  James ignored him; Don was hardly more than a boy at eighteen and no brighter than he had to be.  He followed orders well enough and his back was strong.  It wasn’t easy finding men willing to work the North Sea in autumn.  Briefly, he missed John and his steady good humor, but just as quickly he thanked God his only son was safe at home.  He curled into a bunk and closed his eyes, hoping tomorrow would bring a cool pint and a warm fire.  He fell asleep in an instant.

=====================================

 

John strained to hear the rapid flutter of Andy’s heart over the driving rain and wind rattling the windowpanes of his examining room.  The storm outside made the entire village nervous and Andy learned this variety of anxiety in the cradle.  His brother and father were both fisherman, out running their paired seine nets, searching for a few more pounds of cod before Marine Scotland declared the season closed.  Fear of approaching unemployment on the falling catch drove them out to sea in the worst of weather.

John reached behind to the side table and grabbed a ship model from the dozen resting there.  He handed one wordlessly to Andy, hoping to divert the seven year old long enough to finish the exam.  The boy’s heart settled into a more regular beat and his breathing slowed as small fingers ran over the black enameled surface.

John picked up a tongue depressor and ordered, “Open wide and stick out your tongue.”

His patient complied willingly enough, but then he asked, “I oz ur andake?”

Having heard the question often in his life, John interpreted and answered patiently.  “My hand shakes when I’m tired because I broke my collarbone when I was pulled from my Da’s boat.”

“Oz at en oo ost ur eg?”

“Andrew, mind your manners,” said his mother from her chair near the door.

“It’s all right Brenda, he can’t help but wonder.  And yes, Andy, I hit my shoulder when I was dragged over the rail while baiting the snoods.  The line wrapped around my ankle and pulled me in.  I was lucky they got to me before I drowned, but I lost my foot.  Just goes to show you, not everyone is as skilled as your Da, right?  You don’t have to worry about him.”  Andy’s eyes had gone wide and his mouth silent as he took in John’s story, giving the doctor time to finish the boy’s physical.

“Now, just the one shot so you don’t get lockjaw from any fish hooks, yeah?  If you can figure out what kind of ship that is before I finish, you can have a lolly when you go.”  The boy seriously considered the model while John made short work of the inoculation.  “Well?” asked the doctor.

“It’s a pirate ship,” said Andy with confidence.

“And how did you deduce that?”

“It’s got a black hull and dark sails, so it can sneak up on you and steal things. Am I right?”

“Well, right about the stealing, after a fashion.  Its name is the Rapid Raven.  Some day when you’ve got the hiccups, ask your Dad about her.  He’ll give you a good scare with the story.”

“Oh, ta for that!” scoffed Brenda.  “Now he’ll be up all night!”

“Can’t be any worse than the telly, Brenda.  Give Alan my best and remind him he’s due for his tetanus shot as well, alright?  Stay dry,” he added, seeing them out the door.  He waited ‘til they cleared the steps before turning off the outer lights and latching the door, rubbing his leg as he made his way back to his desk.  The ache thrummed deeper with every gust of the wind.

============================================

James Watson was falling down an endless flight of stairs when a hatch opened before him and he plunged into darkness.  He came awake with a start as the _Cunnartach_ shook herself upright after a mighty roll. Throwing himself from the bunk, he reached over to Ross’s shoulder and gave it a shake.  “Time for a watch, mate.  We better relieve the lads.  Feels like the storm is worse then ever.  You take the aft deck.  I’ll head forward after I check in with Ewan.”

Trusting his friend to follow, James headed back to the wheelhouse.  Ewan stood upright at the wheel.  In this work he was as tireless at seventy as he’d been twenty years before.  “How’s it seem?  The winds haven’t died I guess.”

“Winds are strong as ever and shifting.  The GPS has gone down.  We’re nearly at full moon, so the tide is running high.  S’Good we’re so far out or I’d be worried.”

“I’m going to take a shift at the bow, then I’ll come back here and let you take a kip.  We’re past eight now.  I’ll see you before ten.”

James made his way hand over had to the forward deck and stopped in his tracks.  He could make no sense of what he saw.  Kenneth’s pfd was still clipped into his body harness and the line attached to the rail, but Ken himself was nowhere to be seen.  No torn shreds of cloth, no blood.  Then a stronger swell shifted the deck beneath his feet.

James stared up to the crest of the swell towering over his boat.  Perched above was an angel of death, her wings glowing the red of an eclipsed moon, her skirts black as a coalmine.  In an instant the image resolved into a ship, a sailing ship moving before the wind, bearing down on the _Cunnartach._   In the hollow of his chest, James felt the sailing ship was carrying extinction in its hold.

She was beautiful as a panther and as graceful.  She was a gaff-rigged pilot cutter, fifty feet long and 16 abeam.  The nameplate in her rigging said she was the _Corbeau Rapide_. The Rapid Raven translated James in his head.  Three men stood huddled at the mast in a cluster and one stood alone at the helm.  The helmsman turned his face to James and silver eyes flashed across the trough of sea that separated them.  A predatory smile lit the face of the captain.  It was as if lightning struck the deck.  James was immobilized, even as the wind died to nothing and the swells flattened like a dinner plate. 

In the time it took to draw a shaky breath, the _Corbeau Rapide_ floated calmly beside the _Cunnartach_ , as if they were secure at harbor moorings.  The pale captain stood at the rail, close enough to pass a tea tray between their ships.  “Captain Watson,” he pronounced in an Etonian baritone, “You have something I want and I have something I believe you would like returned.”

The specter swept his long fingered hand toward the mast.  The crewmen of the _Cunnartach_ , Ross, Kenneth and Don, stood there as if bound, their jaws slack and their eyes filled with the fear of the damned.

\---------------------------------------------------

Cunnartach = Dangerous in Gaelic

==========================================


	2. Deals Are Discussed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes meet...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who took a moment to offer comments and kudos. The next update (Chapter 3) will be next week by Wednesday at the latest. If you want spoilers, this does follow the Flying Dutchman opera to a certain extent. This is shaping up to 6 or 7 chapters altogether.

John was finishing up some NHS paperwork when a firm knock sounded at the practice door.  He glanced at his watch.  It was nearly 8 p.m. already.  He stood, stretching, and crossed from the receptionist’s desk to the door, unlocking it and opening it carefully against the gusty wind.

A police car sat at the kerb, engine running and blue lights flashing into the storm.  He smiled at the calm and friendly face before him.

“Greg, I’d ask what brings you out, but I know better than to think you’d be safe at home in a storm like this.”

“Evening, John.  I saw your lights still on and fancied some company as I go off duty.  Care to join me for a pint and some supper?”

“Give me half a mo’.  I need to leave a note for Mary and Ena in case they get in first tomorrow.”

“Like that’s going to happen,” scoffed Greg.  “You’re up before the crows stir.  Hurry up then.  I’ll be in the car, listening to the radio.”

John joined him a few minutes later and they headed to the local station and then to the Dolphin.  There was an open table at the window, which suited them both.  When the waitress left, Greg gibed “Do you ever get anything but haddock?”

“Sometimes I get the cod,” answered John in all seriousness.

“I would think you were sick of fish and fishing and the sea.  Don’t you ever wish you were in Glasgow getting a nice roast?”

“I never wish I were in Glasgow, thank you. I do sometimes wish I were back in London.”

“You got your G.P. in London, didn’t you?  Why did you leave?”

“It’s complicated.  I love London, the fury of it, how it never sleeps.  I love the Thames.  It feels like the pulse of the whole island, headed out to the sea and returning.  But I miss the sea itself when I’m gone too long, the sound of the surf, the sight of the ships rocking at the quay.”

“Despite…  everything?” asked Greg, not knowing how to phrase it.

“You mean, despite the accident.  Yeah, it wasn’t the sea’s fault.  It was just…” John’s eyes shifted away from his friend.  He stared out the window as if he could see into the past.  “I was the one coiling the lines, you know.  I was…  there was a dance.  I was meeting a girl.  I made a bad choice.”  John shifted his gaze back to the present.  “I paid for it, but it wasn’t the sea’s fault.” 

There was something unsaid in all that, but Greg let it go, switching to the narrow range of local gossip a cop and a doctor could comfortably share.  They were finishing their pints when John’s eyes were drawn back to the window, turning sharp with anxiety.

“What is it?  What do you see?” asked Greg.

“”There’s a ship coming in, a fishing boat.”

“Yeah, so.  It’s a fishing port…”

“No, you don’t understand.  No boat that size would head in with this wind.  They risk running up on the breakwaters.  Anyone who was out until sunset would ride it out in deep water.  They’d wait until they at least had better light to run the channel.  The only reason to come in on a night like this is if there’s an emergency.  And those running lights look like the _Cunnartach_ , my Da’s boat.”  John pulled himself to his feet.  “Greg, give me a lift to the dock, would you?”  Without waiting for an answer, he was off.

By the time they reached the wharf, James was tying up the _Cunnartach_ , getting the right tension on the lines as Ewan powered down the generator.

“Da!” called John, swinging himself out of the car and lurching a bit across the quay.  “What’s wrong?”

James Watson turned deliberately, thinning his lips and glancing out to sea before replying.  “I should have known you’d see me come in.  You’ve got a sixth sense for trouble.”

“Who’s hurt?  Let me take a look.  We can use the med kit on the boat.  Shall we call for an ambulance?”

“No one is hurt, so far as I know.  We have a…  a situation,” and he stared at the far side of the _Cunnartach_.  Before John’s eyes, a second ship materialized.

Floating alongside the fishing vessel was a sailing cutter so elegant she took John’s breath away.  She was completely unexpected and achingly familiar at the same time.  On the deck, James Watson’s crew was furling her sails and setting a separate anchor.  A tall, slender man who could only be the captain supervised with a skeptical cant to his head.  His face was concealed in layers of shadow.  A moment later, he hoisted an old fashioned gangplank between the two boats and stepped up on the closer end.

“Invite me ashore, James Watson, as we agreed,” the slender man intoned.  “We have work to do tonight.”

“Da, who is this and what’s happening?”

“John, this is Captain Sherlock Holmes.  We met in the storm and Captain Holmes led us to port.  He and I have an agreement.”

John turned so that his back was to the cutter and her captain.  “That’s the _Corbeau Rapide_ , you know it as well as I do.  There is no way that ship should be here.  There is no way that ship can be here,” John whispered with emphasis.  “What the hell is going on?”

Greg Lestrade had turned off the flashing lights and made his way over to father and son, picking up on the tension instantly.  Before the inspector could say a word, a deep voiced called out to them.

Still poised between the two ships, Holmes barked, “James Watson, you gave me your word to invite me ashore.  You know better than to break this agreement.  There is nothing complex about this.”

John Watson pivoted and lunged for the rail of the _Cunnartach_ , pulling himself up and over with one heave of his shoulders.  He took a minute to get his balance and then crossed the deck with a swaying gait until he stood in front of the gangplank.  “No one boards my family’s boat through threats.  What is your business here Captain Holmes?  How do you come by this ship?  What do you want in Peterborough?  Why are my father’s employees crewing on your ship?”

“Full of questions, aren’t you?  My business is not with you and I owe you no answers.”

James appeared on the deck, nervous exhaustion creasing his face.

“Captain Holmes, this is my son, John.  John, Captain Holmes has asked to be the guest of our family for three nights.  In return, he led us back to harbor and he has also offered…  compensation.”

“What bloody variety of compensation?” growled John.

With a huff, Holmes stepped back to the deck and gestured to Ross and Ken.  They brought a small chest and balanced it on the gangplank where the tall man had been standing.  They stepped back as he reached forward with a long fingered hand and pulled back the lid.  “Enough for your trouble, I think.”

Inside the chest gleamed stacks of antique silver and gold artifacts.  There were cigarette cases wedged between prongs of a toast rack, a thimble nestled in a salt cellar, a button hook thrusting out of a bud vase.  Cuff links and butter knives and a loving cup, all worked with elegance and clearly worth a small fortune, gleamed in the lamplight.

“And what do you really want,” said John, skeptically.

“To come ashore and spend a few days with the captain’s family,” purred Holmes.

“He wants to meet Harriet, John,” said his father.  “He just wants a chance to talk to her.”

“Just a chat, huh?  I don’t think so.  There’s plenty of chat to be had between here and Portsmouth, if chatting is what he has in mind.”

“Nosy and suspicious both, not a nice combination,” sneered Holmes.

“Let the crew come ashore first, before we have any chats,” replied John.

“And leave my ship unprotected?  I don’t think that’s wise, do you?  I’ll pay them well for their time.”

“We are not having any “chats” at all until I come aboard your ship and check over my Da’s crew.”

“Fine,” bit out Holmes, backing into the concealing dark, “See for yourself.”

It was the work of a moment to step aboard the cutter and confer with the three men, all of whom now seemed alert.  A few words confirmed that Holmes had held them hostage a short while until James Watson had agreed to talk to Holmes, but that all three men were now willing to stay aboard for pay.  His worst fears allayed, John turned back to the thin man garbed in shadow.

“Why should we trust you?  Why are you here?  Why would you be even interested in us?  You don’t know anything about us.”

At this, Holmes stepped into the faint light of the wharf’s sodium vapor lamps.  He scanned John from crown to toes and back, then he clipped out rapidly,  “I know you’re a General Practice doctor now.  You originally intended a different specialty, surgery most likely, but the tremor in your dominant had made that choice unworkable.  I know you were crippled in an accident on your father’s boat and he still blames himself for that.  I know you’re color blind, on top of your other problems.  I know you’re the younger child but you feel protective of your sister, possibly because she’s female but more likely because you had a chance to finish university and she did not.  Guilt. I know that you’re thirty-five and still un-married, but you are considering the wisdom of taking up with your office nurse, probably a bad idea if she’s a good nurse, by the way.  Oh, and you had the fried haddock tonight but did not get a chance to finish it.”

Lestrade and James Watson stared at the doctor, waiting for a reaction.  The man himself studied Holmes, then tipped his head to the side, gave it a small shake and said,  “That was amazing, simply amazing.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes, of course, it was remarkable…  quite extraordinary.” In the space of the exchange, the doctor’s eyes warmed from the blue of glacial ice to April sky.  That seemed more remarkable to the taller man.

Sherlock glanced away at the deck and then raised his eyes again, “Did I get anything wrong?”

“Dreadfully accurate for the most part, I’m afraid.  Mary is a Physician Assistant, not a nurse, but lots of people get that wrong, to her annoyance.  I’m not color blind though.  What gave you that idea?”

Holmes frowned and stared at John’s feet.  “Your socks don’t match,” he said, pointing.

John chuckled.  “Serves me right, getting caught.  I get lazy taking off the shoe and getting it back on right.”  He grinned, lifting his trouser leg to reveal the carbon fiber shaft above his prosthetic foot.

“An artificial leg!  Obvious!  Stupid!” and Holmes stamped his own foot like a teenager.

“Well,” said John, still smiling, “Perhaps Harriet would enjoy meeting you.  You’re right; I do get a bit over-protective.  Da!” he yelled, turning and making his way back across the _Cunnartach_ and down to the quay, “I’ll go get Harriet.  She’s probably at the Different Kettle.  Why don’t you all go wait in the office.  You could the arrange for a room for Captain Holmes near yours at the Rose and Thorns.”

“You could text her,” said James.

“She won’t leave the cozy on a night like this, not without convincing.  We’ll be lucky if I can talk her into it.”

“Do you want me to drive you?” asked Greg.

“No, I need to think.  I’d rather walk. Holmes,” John said, turning, “This is Inspector Greg Lestrade.  Watch your step.  He’s the best cop in Peterborough.”

“I’m nearly the only cop in Peterborough, thanks very much,” said Greg to John’s retreating back.  “And you’re right, Mister Holmes, the wharf area is crawling with kids after dark, so if you don’t have an alarm on your boat, it’s best to keep a pair of eyes open.  Not that they’re criminals, but there is a high boredom factor among some of our young people.”

Sherlock nodded absent mindedly as he watched the short, lame doctor pace uphill to gather in his sister.  He then turned to James Watson.  “Shall we?”

The old captain and the policeman crossed the street with the stranger and began to walk toward the office of Watson and Company in thoughtful silence.  After a few steps, James Watson spoke slowly, “You should know about my daughter…”

“She’s in her late thirties, not married or betrothed, no children, a worried father, and her brother assumes the best place to find her on a Tuesday night after 10 p.m. is the local pub,” said Sherlock.  “I can make a few inferences from that, don’t you think?”

“It’s not that simple,” replied Watson.  “It never is with Harriet.  She’s bright and beautiful and quite lively.  She’s a quick wit and a quicker temper.  She never lacked for suitors, pulled ‘em in hand over fist, and she was married once.  Well, I say married…  She called it a hand-fasting.  A local Wiccan officiated and there was a lovely party.  It was really quite nice…” he trailed off.

“But it didn’t last,” finished Sherlock.  “Harriet went back to the drinking and her… wife?  Is that what you would say?  In any case, the other woman left her.”

“Aye.  I don’t know which one of the boys spilled all that, but it’s all true.  Harriet always seems to think things just happen to her.  She never sees how she might be responsible, how she might fix things.”

“Your son, on the other hand takes enough responsibility for the whole family and wants to fix everything, always the caretaker.  To bad he’s crippled and lacks his sister’s looks.  He might be married himself by now.”

Lestrade snorted. “You only say that because you got in a snit when he was laughing.  John Watson could pull any soul in this village with his smile and his temperament, and I mean ANY soul.”

“That’s quite enough about my son, Gregory.  And yes, Captain Holmes, John takes everything to heart, you’re right, but he’s as steady and practical as they come…  We’re here.”

Watson drew an old skeleton key from his pocket, turning the lower latch, and then used a second key on the deadbolt above.  A light chime sounded when he entered and the man punched four digits in to an alarm keypad before flipping on the lights.  They were in a small waiting room with a counter and a few chairs.  Watson ducked around the divider and headed to the larger office on the right of a short hallway.  “You might as well get comfortable,” gesturing to an old sofa and some ratty club chairs, “We could be here a while.”

“How did your son lose his foot?” Sherlock asked, addressing James.

The captain sighed as he settled himself behind his desk.  He absently squared some files as he spoke.  “We had a long liner then.  John’s grandfathers ran that together while I managed the seiner.  John crewed with them every summer.  I thought for a bit he’d take over the business, he liked it so well.  He coiled the lines every evening and baited them every time they went out.  He had done for years.  The summer after his first year at university…  my father had just died and John insisted on going out.  I guess he was out of practice.  He made a mistake one evening with the snoods.  The next morning, they tangled around his leg, dragging him over the side as the line paid out.  Somebody hit the break and they turned the boat around.  They pulled him out and he was in shock, but still breathing.  Anyway, his ankle was crushed and most of his foot was gone.  They tried, but couldn’t save it.”

“He’s done well, James,” said Lestrade, voice laden with consolation.

“He does bloody well,” James shot back, “and he never complained, not once.  First thing he said when he woke up was “Sorry, it was my own fault.”  He’d been on rugby scholarship at Edinburgh.  He lost that, of course, but his grades were good enough they offered him an academic scholarship for “boys of reduced means”.  Somebody told them we had to sell the long liner to help pay for rehab.  His grandfather couldn’t bear to go out without him, anyway.”

The past hung silently in the air, leaving the men to their own thoughts until the door chimed again.  Two sets of footsteps sounded in the hallway and they all turned to the office door.

The woman who entered looked a lot more like James Watson than John did.  She was tall and statuesque.  Her hair was auburn, long and thick.  Milk white skin showed a scattering of pale freckles and her face bore hardly a wrinkle or sign of concern.  Emerald green eyes fastened on Sherlock and a rich, red mouth quirked into a suggestive smile.  “You must be Captain Holmes,” she said.  “John says you’re clever, funny and rich.  He didn’t mention good looking.  What else do you have to offer?”

“Right to business then?  No small talk? No getting to know you?” Sherlock asked drily.

“You pulled me from a game of darts and a full pint.  I’m assuming you have something to say worth the trouble,” Harriet replied.

“That will be up to you to decide.  I… sail under a long-term contract,” explained Sherlock, choosing his words carefully.  “My… sponsor requires that I find a willing… help-meet who sails with me.  I attempt to satisfy this contract every seven years and I have two days and three nights to make arrangements.  If you agree, you join me on my ship for the foreseeable future.”

“And what do I get out of this deal?  Money? A wedding?  Great sex in exotic locations? I am not hearing a compelling offer here.”

“My only requirement, Ms. Watson, is your willing presence with me aboard the _Corbeau Rapide_ for an unspecified period of time.  It is up to my sponsor to determine when terms are met.  I will not keep you against your will.  I will not ask you for anything you do not wish to offer.  You have my word.  If you fulfill the contract to my sponsor’s terms, you obtain an equal share of all my worldly possessions and my gratitude.”

“Call me Harry, everyone does,” she said, narrowing her eyes.  “It seems I should be negotiating with this sponsor and not with you.  When can I meet him?”

“Her, as it happens,” Sherlock said with some asperity, “and I have not seen her myself for… years.  No one has met her terms in that time and she can’t be bothered to show up until they do.”

“I am still not hearing a convincing argument here.”

“You get a free cruise on a beautiful ship and a little edge of the unknown to add a thrill.  Think of it as a gamble in which the only stake is some of your time and the possible gain is quite large.  The Raven herself is worth four hundred thousand quid.  You can ask around if you doubt my word.”

“You’d sell you boat if we fulfill this contract?”  Harriet asked skeptically.

“Ms. Watson, I do not exaggerate when I say I would sell my soul to fulfill this contract,” Sherlock stated with conviction.  “Unfortunately, I appear not to have one of any value.”

Harriet narrowed her eyes.  She turned to the window and stared at the lights of Peterborough, the village where she had spent her whole life.  Finally, she turned, “Three nights you said.  Well I need some time to think.  I’ll sleep on it.”  She nodded to John and her father.  “I’m going upstairs to the flat.  I’ll see you tomorrow.  Don’t forget to lock up.”  With that, she left the room.

“Well,” said John, “that went better than I would have predicted.”

“Come along, Captain Holmes,” said James Watson.  “We’ll find you a room next door at the Rose and Thorns.  It’s where I have a room and quite comfortable.  John, will you close up?”

“I’ll help,” offered Greg.  “I’ll give John a ride home as well.”

The four men left the office in silence, turning off the lights.


	3. Dreams and Deductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock remembers his own past and investigates a bit of Harriet's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has offered encouragement. Warning, secondary school French ahead. Corrections welcome...

Sherlock had not slept on dry land for decades.  The few hours of shore time he was allowed every seven years were too rare and precious to waste in sleep.  He usually walked the streets, searching for wastrels, criminals, mad men, anyone who could excite his interest for more than a moment, anyone who wasn’t boring.  As he paced his room in the Rose and Thorns, he tried to puzzle out how his present dilemma had come to pass. 

Twelve previous opportunities had ended in failure or turmoil.  Twelve previously promised helpmeets had abandoned him before he cleared a breakwater.  He had no reason to hope this time would be any different, and yet, and yet…  A kind smile, an open face and a pair of deep blue eyes once again threatened to ensnare him.  It had been nearly a century.  How could he possibly be such a fool?  He would not allow this to happen.

Sherlock threw himself down on the bed, assuming his thinking pose.  He needed to delete these sensations of déjà vu, of familiarity, of longing.  He closed his eyes and found a lapis lazuli gaze insinuating itself into his heart.  His memory provided thin, firm lips brushing against his own, a well-muscled chest pressed to his.  Against his will, he slipped into a dream.

It begins on the beach near Les Hemmes d’Oye, outside Calais.  The old chateau is behind Sherlock.  He feels suspicious eyes peering down on them from every window.  Jean-Jacques is painting, working on a portrait of Sherlock who lies debauched on an old blanket, an empty bottle of wine at his elbow.  They had not bothered with glasses.  The artist leans down to adjust Sherlock’s face and shoulder, but the Englishman grabs his wrist and places kisses fervently along the pulse point.  The young Frenchman glances up to the threatening windows and pulls away.

The scene shifts.  Jean-Jacques has just turned nineteen and walks ahead of him, a light jacket hooked over one shoulder.  They are in Cowes, walking away from the quay, the River Medina at their backs.  They are making the gentle climb up Sun Hill, toward their rented rooms on Union Road.  They have spent the day on the Solent, timing the Raven against the incoming tide.  Jean-Jacques is optimistic about their chances in tomorrow’s races and it shows in his quick steps.  Sherlock lengthens his stride and catches up, slinging an arm around the smaller man’s shoulders.  They pass a mews to the left and Sherlock steers them into the darkened space, deeply in shadow as the sun is near to setting.  Sherlock presses Jean-Jacques against the brick wall, suddenly desperate for his lips, and in the darkness, the Frenchman responds quickly before his brain catches up and he shoves Sherlock away.

“Qu'est-ce que vous faites ? Quelqu'un va voir!”

“Ils ne sont pas regardant,” murmurs Sherlock, pulling him closer.

Everything slips sideways, they are arguing.  Sherlock locks his hands around Jean-Jacques’s shoulders, yelling in English, “We leave tomorrow.  We will sail for Bermuda and stay there until spring.  Calais is drowning in its own excrement of traditions; there is nothing for us there.  Sail with me or go to hell!”

The Frenchman’s face is suffused with sorrow.  Before Sherlock’s eyes, he ages a decade and then two in the space of a breath.  Worry lines crease his lover’s brow and a scar blooms across his right cheek, ending below the jaw line.  Golden hair turns ashen and streaked with grey.  This is Jean-Jacques as Sherlock last saw him, across the swells and through a thickening fog, a man lost in grief and exhaustion and still battling for life.

The artist tears himself away and runs downhill, back to the harbor.  Sherlock gives chase, but his legs are lead, he can barely keep his lover in sight.  As they close on the docks, he sees Jean-Jacques leap into a ferry just as it leaves.  Sherlock’s eyes jump to the wheelhouse.  The captain is an older man wearing a black uniform with gold braid and he snarls as the young man regains his footing on a slippery deck.  The deck is slick with blood.  Sherlock’s gaze sweeps over the passengers.  They are walking corpses, with empty eye sockets and skin draping loosely from their bones.  It is a ship of the dead.  Sherlock calls out, struggling to yell in French and English, strangling for breath, but nothing comes out except his lover’s pet name, “Jean, Jean, Jean!”

Sherlock came awake with a jerk, sobbing into the dark.  The distant, rhythmic toll of the bell buoys was the only comfort.

============================

When he could breath again, Sherlock stood and slipped from the room into the empty hallway of the inn.  He treaded silently down the stairs and out the front door, hearing the electronic lock buzz closed behind him.  The clouds above were thinning but the moon was still obscured.  The front door of Watson and Co. was conspicuous from the walk, but a broad alley led to the truck loading dock.  The door was secured with a keypad lock.  Sherlock contemplated it for a moment and keyed in the year he calculated for the death of James Watson’s wife.  The light on the keypad glowed green and he opened the door.  The alarm chimed again, but Sherlock had memorized this code, probably James’ birth year.  He listened for steps upstairs, but it was silent.

The back rooms smelled strongly of fresh fish. Coolers loomed right and left.  Their lights gave plenty of illumination as Sherlock walked confidently toward the front of the building, stopping at a door with a curtained window.  The knob turned smoothly and he let himself in to what was clearly the finance office.  The computer on the main desk was off and Sherlock reviewed what he did and did not know as he waited for the machine to power up. 

It was interesting, what had and had not changed in seven years.  An hour of observation in the bar of the Rose and Thorns revealed many changes in small electronic devices.  People had them nearly annealed to their palms.  The computer sitting in front of him had changed little by comparison.  He congratulated himself on gaining some education on this front.  The web site designer he had seduced in Galway seven years ago had been only too happy to demonstrate the wonders of the Internet.  The man’s laptop had offered far more diversion than the man himself.  As the screen of Harriet’s machine winked to life, he quickly found that the principles of passwords, files, and software were quite nearly childsplay.

The hours rolled by as Sherlock perused electronic check registers, charts of accounts and lists of vendors.  The records went back twenty years, to when the company ran two boats.  He found the records of the sale of the long liner and trips to Edinburgh for a nineteen-year-old man to get fitted for a new leg.  He found check records for funeral costs and tuition for vocational training at Aberdeen College.  A family’s life took shape in his mind through its financial records.

Sherlock closed his eyes and listened as John said, “No one boards my family’s boat …” In his mind’s eye he sees small, strong hands grip a rail and muscular shoulders pull a slender set of hips over the gunwales.  He considered what it might be like to walk miles of hospital hallways on one leg during residency.  He heard a clear, bright, self-deprecating laugh. Lestrade was wrong; he had noted that smile quite clearly.  His thoughts were arrested as floorboards over his head creaked and Sherlock came back to the present.

Sherlock looked up from the computer screen into a pair of deep green eyes.  He thought, _her father is right, she really is stunning._   The captain kept his face composed while he pushed away from the desk.

“Find what you were looking for,” said Harriet, sliding into the small room.

“Found what I expected,” responded Sherlock.  “If Watson and Company survives another eighteen months, it will be a miracle.”

“Yeah, well it’s a bad time to be a commercial fisherman, inn’t?”

“Not this bad.  Your father is more than competent in his work and careful with his money.  Your brother has been generous in helping with repairs.  They should be solvent, at least.  Money is disappearing into the ether a few hundred quid at a time, every month.  Where is it going Harriet?  That’s a bit much even for a ferocious drinking habit.  I wonder if your brother knows about these electronic fund transfers to an account outside the UK?”

“What difference does it make to you?” she snarled.

“All the difference in the world.  I’m very fond of a good puzzle and a clever criminal, you see.  But this is not all that clever.  It takes so very little to deceive the people who love you.”

“What will you do then?  Run to Da and rat me out?”

“That is not in either of our interest, is it?  On the other hand, if you board the Raven with me Friday morning before dawn, you have a graceful exit strategy.  We can even make it look like I forced you to withdraw the funds, threatened you somehow.  You come out the good daughter and I the rapacious pirate.  Everyone’s expectations are met.”

“And I do what, bounce around on your yacht for the next seven years keeping you entertained?  You never explained that bit.  Peterborough has a few pubs at least.  I’ll find my own way out of here sooner or later.”

“But you haven’t yet, and it’s been a long wait, hasn’t it?  If you don’t come with me, I do think Lestrade might find your bookkeeping fascinating by Friday afternoon.  I told you I won’t keep you against your will, but if you do come, and you survive one year of my salubrious company, I will drop you at the port of your choice, your existing bankroll intact, regardless of what my sponsor decides.  I’ll add a year’s wages as well.  Of course, if we become fast friends,” he said with a sneer, “you’d be welcome to stay on.”

Harriet pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her dressing gown, tapping it on the back of her hand as she paced the small room.  “You know,” she said flatly, “the piece of this I really don’t get is why you want me to go.  You set my gaydar off loud and clear in the first five minutes last night.  Why not Lestrade, he’s good looking?  Why not my brother?”

“In the first place, the rules of the game are rather well established, I’m afraid; it must be one of your father’s children, since he invited me ashore, so it’s you or John.  In the second place, well, your brother is so terribly conventional, isn’t he?  Unexceptional looks, committed to an ordinary profession, over-achiever, crippled, hitting middle age before he turns forty by the look of him, can’t even manage to keep his wardrobe up to date but worried about what other people think about his habits and your habits…  Dull, dull, deadly dull.  I doubt I’d make it a month before he went for a very long swim.  Sexual favors are not the point of this exercise.”  Sherlock was very careful not to allude to what the point was, and Harriet was not the sort to wonder.

“You might be surprised at how difficult that swim would be to manage,” she said absent-mindedly.  “There’s more under the jumpers than you might think, and he’s stubborn as a mastiff.  Still, point taken.  I’ll think about it.”

“There is really not that much for you to consider, but I’m feeling indulgent.  I have so little time ashore, I don’t mind the wait.  I will meet you for supper at your pub, The Different Kettle, wasn’t it?  We can sort the details then.”

She stared at him a moment, weighing it up.  “All right,” she said at last, “I’ll see you at half six.  I’m off for a shower,” and she left the room.

==========================

Qu'est-ce que vous faites ? = What are you doing?

Quelqu'un va voir!  = Someone will see!

Ils ne sont pas regardant.= No one is paying attention.

==========================


	4. Two Walks and a Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later on Wednesday, Sherlock shares some observations and memories with John. John has a surprise or two of his own.

Sherlock stared at the space Harry had occupied, considering his options.  He had been through this cycle often enough to keep all hope trussed in the back of a very dark closet in his mind.  These days ashore now had three purposes:  the alleviation of boredom, the gaining of new information that might divert him for the next seven years and the avoidance of any emotional complications that might compromise the inevitable leave taking.  The puzzle of the Watson family and their very layered relationships was mildly diverting.  Harry was a perfect candidate for his negotiations; they had no personal interest in each other at all.  He could allow those pieces to rest on the chessboard for a bit.  Now was the time to entertain himself with new information.  He’d begin with a stroll around the village.  

Peterborough was a Scottish port town like many others.  The houses near the sea were small, mostly older terraced housing with a scattering of bungalows.  The shops were mostly uphill, made of brick and block and stucco.  Beyond the old commercial district the newer housing began, which Sherlock found so dull he turned around and headed back toward the port.

He was walking downhill, past some monument on Broad Street, when he noticed gilt lettering on the window of an old shop front saying “GP Surgery, Watson Group Practice”, followed by John’s name and two others and a set of office hours.  On a whim, he strode up the two steps and pushed the door open.

“Hello,” said the pleasant young woman at reception, “We’re just shutting for lunch.  May I help you?”

“I am looking for Dr. Watson.”

“Did you miss an appointment?  He only does half days on Wednesday and he just told me he’s off tomorrow,” Ena, according to her nameplate, kept chattering.  “I can probably get you in with our PA this afternoon…  or Dr. Hooper on tomorrow perhaps.  If it’s an emergency…”

“Captain Holmes,” inquired a light tenor from the back of the waiting area, “Can I help you?”  John was clearly on his way out the door, a surprisingly handsome leather jacket zipped over his argyle cardigan.

Sherlock suddenly realized he had no logical explanation for his presence.  What would constitute a normal reason?  “Dr. Watson, umm,” he started, mentally tracing his walk in reverse, “I was… about to stop in the tearoom up the street and I realized…”

“Oh, of course, no local currency I expect, since you’ve just arrived.  Did you get breakfast at the Inn at least?”  Taking in Sherlock’s hesitation, he guessed, “No, you didn’t.  You must be famished.  Please join me; I could use a cuppa myself.”  Turning to the receptionist, he said, “Thanks for reorganizing tomorrow’s appointments, Ena.  Let Mary and Molly know my schedule, would you?”, and he breezed out the door, Sherlock in his wake.

A few moments later, Sherlock was folded onto a very small chair at a similarly small table in a charming but quite small tearoom. John joined him, placing a plate with some slices of cheddar and homemade pickles on the table, along with a generous bowl of plum crumble and two spoons.  He passed over some folded currency as well.  “You might need that later.  Katy will be along with the tea in a moment,” he explained.  “If I carried it myself you’d need to drink it from the saucer, which would be fine, by the way.  Half the fishermen in town do when they’re in a hurry.”

“So a job as a waiter is not entirely out of the question then?”

“Nah, I’d starve on the tips I’d get with this face,” answered John with a grin.  Sherlock contemplated how patently false that statement was as he nodded thanks for the tea presented by the petite hand of Katy.  He added his sugar and sipped in silence for a moment, casting about once more for something to say.

“So, how do you do it then?” asked John.

“Do what?” Sherlock responded, cautiously.

“Read people, like you did with me last night.  It was the most amazing trick.”

“It isn’t a trick,” the tall man responded sharply.  “It’s simple observation and careful listening.”

 “Alright then, explain.”

“I knew your father had two children because I questioned his crew about that much when we were at sea.  Your dramatic protectiveness of your family’s boat made it obvious you would feel the same about your sister.  Your father’s willingness to introduce me to her indicated a lack of prospects for her.  Your eagerness to examine the crew yourself screamed ‘doctor’ but the small size balanced by significant strength in your hands made it likely someone would have suggested a surgical specialty to you, which would fit your rather covertly assertive personality.   The limp and hand tremor, your father’s protectiveness of you and the family nature of the business all suggest you were injured aboard his boat.  Your age I inferred from your face and prematurely greying hair, your marital status from the lack of a ring or any sign thereof (you are so attached to family ties and symbols after all) and your interest in your professional assistant was a guess, but a statistically valid one since doctors often lack time for socializing.  There was a bit of haddock on your jacket lapel, showing both what you ate and that you did not take the time to use your napkin.  If I had seen you in better light I might have added your hobby of wood carving from your calluses and your penchant for detective novels, since one is sticking out of your jacket pocket.”  Sherlock sat back and waited for the predictable explosion to follow.

John squinted his eyes and tilted his head during the recitation, his face still and listening.  He sat in silence and then, without warning, threw his head back and chortled like a child on a carousel.  “Amazing!  My calluses?  Really?“

Without a thought, Sherlock took the doctor’s smaller hands in his own, turning them palm up and tracing the thickened skin on both hands running from index finger to thumb.  “Symmetrical calluses from a draw knife. Unique.  Obvious.”

“Fantastic!  That was bloody wonderful!  A bit rude perhaps but my God…”

“Alright?”

“Yes!  Absolutely!”  At that, John reversed their hands and ran his thumb over the fingertips of Sherlock’s left hand.  “So, a string player then?”

Suddenly aware that they were holding hands at a cafe table, Sherlock pulled away.  “Violin,” he confessed, distractedly.

John looked at him with amusement and something else, something that made the blood rush in the pale captain’s ears.  The quiet drew on and then John said, “A man of many gifts.  Can you do it with anyone, the deduction bit?  Can you deduce the bloke by the streetlamp in the corduroy jacket?”

And so Sherlock did, deducing the passers-by for John’s admiration, oblivious that Katy had brought more tea and the cheese and crumble were long gone.  Finally, John asked, “Is that what you did all morning, unearth the secret lives of the residents of Peterborough?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“God, you must have covered half the town at least; we’re not large.  You’ll be bored before sunset.”

“That is always a danger, but unavoidable I’m afraid.”

John licked his lips and stared out at the window for a moment, then turned and took in his companion’s clothing.  He wore a black, waxed cotton jacket over a heavy, indigo, roll-neck jumper and a soft linen shirt.  His black worsted trousers and sport oxfords looked sturdy.  John gave a nod and asked, “How long has it been since you’ve been more than a few kilometers from the sea?”

“A… very long time,” came the hesitant reply.

“Alright then, come on, we’ll take Bonnie.”

Before he could object that he was going nowhere with anyone named Bonnie, the doctor was already out in the street.  When Sherlock caught up, John had crossed to the car park and was straddling a motorbike, taking it off the kickstand.

“What are you doing?” asked Sherlock, aware of the absurdity of the question.

“Taking you for a ride.  Come on, she’s vintage, but I have a patient with a garage and four children who keeps her in top shape for me.”

“And where do I sit?”

John kicked the bike to life and gave a grin. “Wherever you fit.”

Sherlock hesitated, looking for a moment like a feral cat avoiding a net.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of motorcycles?  It’s perfectly safe. Look, I’ve even got a spare helmet,” he said, unbuckling one from a saddle bag.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sherlock, swinging a long leg over the back of the bike and taking the helmet.  He buckled it on moments before John swung out of the car park and gunned the engine just a bit.  Without a thought, Sherlock wrapped his long fingers around the bones of John’s hips and they were off.

They wound their way up the narrow streets of Peterborough before reaching the wider divided motorway that led due west through the suburbs.  In a few minutes the residential buildings suddenly gave way to rocky pastures and they were speeding past hawthorns and rock walls and sheep and very little else.

It occurred to Sherlock that he should have been bored and he was somewhat startled to realize he was not. He had never been on a motorbike before, though he would never admit it, and the speed was as intoxicating as it was during a good regatta.  John drove with a smooth confidence and Sherlock was free to concentrate on the bracing air that brought just a hint of autumn and the feeling of John’s waist as they leaned into a turn.

In thirty minutes they were slowing down as the T140 pulled onto a graveled road.  A dark tunnel of beech replaced pasture and then they were in an old wood of spruce and pine.  John pulled the bike into a small lay by and turned off the engine.  The gentle moan of the wind and the alarm call of a jackdaw were the only sounds.  Sherlock felt the years drop away.  He might have been twenty again, standing in the wood behind his family’s home.  “Where are we?” he asked.

“Drinnies Wood, there’s some good walking paths.” John answered.  “I should have picked up a thermos of coffee; it’s cooler here.  We should move a bit to stay warm.”

“Alright,” said Sherlock, dismounting. “Lead the way.”

They walked in comfortable silence for a while.  Sherlock thought he always sought conversation ashore to compensate for the years alone at sea, but somehow this quiet companionship fed a hunger he didn’t know he felt.

 

They had covered a kilometer or two when John queried, “So why does such a very posh English gentleman have a boat with a French name?”

“It was my French grandfather’s.  He bought her in Le Havre when they were replacing sailing cutters with steamships.  He raced her a few seasons before Grand-mere decided he was too old, so he promised her to me if I stayed at Cambridge.  I’d been threatening to quit.”

“That’s a hell of a graduation present!”

“Yes, well I was the only family member with a passion for sailing.  The rest of them were fair weather sailors and had no taste for getting cold and damp.”

They took a few more steps in silence and John said, “She’s famous, you know, The Raven.  They tell stories about her and her captain at the local pubs on a winter night.”

“What kind of stories?”

“You know, superstitious sailor stories.  She’s a ghost ship.  She was a slaver.  She carries the damned to hell and her captain is named Charon.  She foretells tremendous storms and you should get to shore.  She’ll lead you up on the rocks.  She’ll lead you to safe harbor.  Her crew begs you to carry letters home to their family, but if you try, you find they have all been dead a hundred years or more.  You know, the usual.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think your ship was sighted by reputable observers over fifty years ago, but she disappeared without a trace.  I think one man doesn’t sail a boat that age alone without a damn good reason.  I think her captain is haunted, in some way, but can’t or won’t tell the tale.”

“Maybe it isn’t a very interesting tale.  Maybe her captain isn’t a good storyteller.”

John stopped and looked Sherlock squarely in the eye.  “Try me,” he said. "I'm a good audience."

“I was twenty-three,” started Sherlock, after a pause.  “I was racing the Raven with a crew of four at Cowes and we did well, very well.  I wanted to sail her to Bermuda for the winter and then north to Newport in the spring.  My mastman was French.  He wanted to go home.  He and I, we were…  We were… very close.”  The story stuttered to a halt.  John glanced to his right at the taller man’s face and found it clouded by grief.

“When was this?”

“Hmm?”

“When were you racing at Cowes?  What year?”

Sherlock looked far away, into the distant past.  He had never told this tale, but he felt like Scheherazade, spinning out the story to earn one more day of life. Finally he said, “Nineteen twenty two.  It was nineteen twenty-two.  The war had been over for four years, the influenza pandemic had passed and nothing bad was ever supposed to happen again.  There was nothing I couldn’t do or have, and I decided that I wanted…  all I wanted…”

Silence fell again.  They had started walking again, slowly.  John broke the silence as gently as he could.  “All you wanted was a Frenchman you couldn’t have.”

Sherlock stopped in his tracks, his eyes closed.  He breathed deeply for a moment and then said, “His name was Jean-Jacque Lippman.  He was a painter.  He lost himself in sketching and brushwork and he loved it desperately.  His family had a shipping business in Calais.  He was his father’s only son and they were counting on him to take over the business.  They made an agreement when he turned eighteen that he could take the years leading up to his twenty first birthday for his art and that then he would settle down.  We met on the beach near Dieppe.  He was quite cheeky and asked if he could paint my portrait.  Things… progressed from there.”

“He came home with me at Christmas.  My family was exquisitely polite in that fastidiously rude way only the English gentry can manage.  They had always cast a blind eye on my personal habits; we were proudly eccentric.  Besides, I had two older brothers so it hardly mattered what I did, but introducing a Jew in polite society, that went a little too far.  We escaped to London by the New Year.  By spring we moved to Portsmouth and then Cowes for the racing season.”

“Something happened in Cowes?” John asked.  Sherlock shrugged.

“He was only nineteen.  He got homesick.  He wanted to see his family. They disapproved of me and called me a bad influence to my face. Rationally, he knew they would never accept us, but he couldn’t make a choice.  He couldn’t walk away from any of us.”

“And so you tried to force a choice.”

Sherlock sighed deeply, walking again.  “Yes,” he said.  “He begged me to come to Calais for a while.  He said he had until he was twenty-one before they would try to force his hand.  I called him a coward.  I told him if he wouldn’t come with me to Bermuda, I would never speak to him again.  He left me at the dock on the Solent and I yelled after him, ‘I hope you rot in hell!’  He never turned around.”

“But that was a very, very long time ago,” John murmured. “What happened?”

“You believe this story?” Sherlock asked skeptically, not looking at John.  “You believe I am over a century old?”

“I believe you are telling me the truth.  I don’t understand the facts, I don’t understand the how of it, but yes, I believe you are telling me the truth.”

Sherlock chuckled, “You’re madder than I am.”

“Well, I am Scot’s,” said John.  “We’re all mad by nature.  So…  what happened next?”

“To be frank, things get a little murky after that.  I was walking to the Raven; I always felt more composed there.  I was only a few yards from her slip when an old and toothless woman approached me.  She hobbled up and asked me to take her across the water to the Southsea Castle.  She said her grandson was in need of help and it was urgent.  I told her I wasn’t a bloody ferry service, cursed her roundly and pushed past her.  She put her hand on my arm and turned me with surprising strength.  I found myself staring into the face of a beautiful, fierce woman who clearly wasn’t a woman at all.”

“I should have been expecting it.  Generations earlier, sometime during the Stuarts, one of my distant grandfathers, Medwin Holmes, was hunting one autumn near Dunbaur and disappeared for several months.  He was presumed dead, but turned up looking fit in the early spring.  That summer solstice, a basket containing a baby was deposited on his doorstep with a note pronouncing the bairn as his heir.  He never married, died while still young and the boy carried on the Holmes name.  According to the story, when the boy reached his majority a woman found him during the harvest moon, claiming to be his mother.  She was clearly one of the Fey.  She said he was entitled to have one desire fulfilled as her son, that she could grant one wish.  She has visited random Holmes children ever since.”

“So you have a great grandmother who is an _l_ _eannan sìth._   Well that explains a lot.”

“Unfortunately,” Sherlock said ruefully, “I did not credit the stories or recognize her until it was too late.  She said I was a useless child, not worthy and not ready to redeem my gift.  She said I had to grow up before she would speak to me again.”

“You haven’t seen her since?”

“No.  She said she would return when my temper had become tolerable and that someone else would be the judge of that.”

“So that’s what you’re looking for then?  Someone to tolerate you?”

“More or less,” said Sherlock, evasively.  “It’s more challenging than you might think.  I drift about on the Raven for seven years by human time.  To me, it seems that time just... stops.  It’s hard to explain.  One evening I’m anchored near Malta and the next morning I’m sailing off Kilcommon.  A fog decends and when it lifts, I’m looking at Prince Edward Island.  The Raven has taken on enchantments of her own, but every seven years I find myself in a storm at the full moon near another ship.  The captain always has at least one child who can act as my judge, who will demonstrate my...  acceptable qualities by freely sailing with me.  This is the end of the thirteenth cycle, so here I am.”

Their walk had brought them back to the lay by.  John was limping now, just a bit.  “I talked too much,” said Sherlock, “and I wasn’t paying attention.  We’ve walked too far.”

“Don’t be an arse.  I could have stopped anytime I wanted.  It’s good for me to stretch out, but let’s head back.”

They were nearly back to Broad Street when John said, over his shoulder, “Fancy some dinner?”

“I’m meeting Harriet for dinner.  I hope to work out the details of our contract.”

Sherlock watched John worrying his bottom lip and felt his back tense.  John pulled the Bonneville into the car park, putting down the kickstand after Sherlock dismounted.  The doctor stared at his own shoes in silence and then opened his mouth to speak.  “Harriet is beautiful, gorgeous really.  She’s like a fireworks display, kind of takes your breath away.  But she’s not really a very good sailor, you should know.”

“Hmmm, yet she was raised in the same household as you.”

“Yes, but…  Well, she knows the basics, but she resents routine tasks and normal boat puttering.  She won’t take orders, even in an emergency.  She hates silence, it drives her mad.  And she prefers talking to listening.”

“Rather like most people, then.”

“I suppose so, but…”

“What about you then?  Are you so much the better sailor, one leg and all?”

It sounded like a sneer or a taunt, but John suspected something else was going on.  He refused to take the bait and simply said, “Yes actually, I’m quite a good sailor.”

“Really?  And yet your father hasn’t let you near his boat since your accident.”

“Yes, really,” answered John, as they began to walk up Broad Street, back toward the surgery.  “I won’t ask how you know about Da, but you’re right, I haven’t been on any commercial vessels since I lost my foot. Dad managed to intimidate every fishing boat captain in the harbor and there’s not one that will take me out of sight of land.  That hasn’t kept me in dry-dock though. I crewed four years at uni.  I don’t look like a grinder, but there’s nothing like a year on crutches to build endurance in the shoulders, so I was always welcome.”  He glanced a Sherlock and gave a cheeky grin before saying, “ I’m good in the pit as well, but the truth is, I’m one of the best helmsmen you’ll ever meet. “

“”That’s a bit grandiose, under the circumstances,” smirked Sherlock. “I’m afraid you’d need to prove a claim like that, before I’d let you touch the Raven’s helm.”

John stopped in front of the taller man, halting their progress.  “You should let me prove it,” he said with certainty.  “You should take me with you instead of Harriet.  I guarantee you’d be much happier with the results.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Sherlock, dismissively, while staring at the far horizon.  “Why would I take you for an indeterminate time aboard my ship?”

John reached up and grabbed the taller man’s shoulders, pulling him down and kissing him soundly, not hurrying at all.  When he broke away, he said, “That’s one reason.  Meet me on the quay at Gleason’s tomorrow morning at ten, and I’ll give you another.”  He turned on his heel and walked away.

 _John Watson just kissed me in the middle of Broad Street_ , thought Sherlock.  _Well, that was a surprise._

===============================

 _l_ _eannan sìth_ = a Sith or Celtic fairy who takes a human lover

grinder = operates large winches on a sailing ship, for instance, to raise the sails

========================================

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original Flying Dutchman myth is based on the concept of eternal damnation, an idea I have theological problems with, so I made a substitute explanation. Apologies to purists...
> 
> A picture of Bonnie is available in the cover art companion to this story. It is courtesy of the wonderful folks at wikipedia.  
> If you find anything confusing or erroneous, please let me know. I am happy to make corrections or explanations.


	5. Cooperation and Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All is going well until Sherlock reveals deductions that John would prefer to leave hidden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who has stayed with this tale. I deeply appreciate your encouragement.  
> Once again, this is not a manual on sailing.
> 
> ===============================================================

Wednesday evening, Sherlock arrived at the Different Kettle before six.  After picking up a Blackthorn cider, he made his way to a back table from where he could observe the bar, the door and most of the room.  He watched the barman interact with regulars and new customers alike, watched the friendly and efficient waitress and felt prepared when he saw Harriet arriving.

He gave the barman his full attention as the man became aware of Harry’s presence.  He saw him square his shoulders slightly as she approached and give a pleasant, careful smile as she placed her order.  As she navigated to Sherlock’s table with a pint of Tennent’s, the bartender’s shoulders relaxed, focusing again on other customers.

The waitress was upon them as soon as Harry slid into the booth, facing Sherlock. “Mince and clapshot for me, Arline.  The soups are all good here,” she added, turning to Sherlock, “but it’s strictly home-style cooking.”

“Scouse, then, if you have it, and any kind of bread, thank you.” Arline bustled away and Sherlock returned his attention to Harry. She was more relaxed than any alcoholic could be without a drink. “Not a busy day, I gather.”

“As busy as it gets.  Orders come in Wednesday from the restaurants for Friday dinners.  The storm made for a light catch on Monday and Tuesday, so we’ll be sold out of everything fresh.  Da normally would be back out today or tomorrow, but he won’t send old Ewan out with just Ken and Ross or Don and one of them is watching your ship, and he wants to be here, so…  I guess he’ll wait ‘til Friday.”

“So my presence brings a loss of income.”

“You saw the books.  It won’t make a huge difference in the end.  I know you think it’s all my fault,” she said, lowering her voice, “but it’s not.  Maybe I accelerated the schedule, but they can’t compete with the bigger trawlers.  He’s got a gourmet specialty, ecologically-sensitive market now but it’s not enough to pull us through with the changes in regulations and the dropping catch.”

“So you were just taking your share up front,” Sherlock said with a grim smile.

“No!  You don’t understand; it wasn’t about me!  Well, it wasn’t just about me.  We needed to diversify, make some other investments.  I saw an opportunity to get into some other EU markets…”

“Greece,” he interrupted with certainty. “You placed investments in Greece.”

“Yeah,” she said slumping, “John’s practice was doing well.  He could afford to help Dad out with cash flow.  We had some extra in the account for a change.  Dad said we should have a nest egg.  I thought… I thought…”

“You thought you could be the hero for a change.  You thought John could share the Golden Child spotlight with you for a while.  And when it started to look successful, you got bold and you moved more money over, but when it all went completely sour in 2010, you changed your strategy.  You covered expenses with lines of credit and you began making other investments, smaller but safer investments, a smaller, tidy nest egg for one.”

Arline delivered their plates to a silent table and Harry listlessly began folding the mince in with the potato mixture.  “You have no idea,” she whispered.  “You have no idea what it’s like, being his sister.  ‘Take care of your little brother,’ they said, like I made any difference.  I was bigger, older, taller and he was this tiny little… tiny little Man!  He was always watching and listening.  He looked old from the day he was born.  He always knew how to get on everyone’s good side, how to do well in school, how to get on the team, how to be creative, how to get the girls, how to be helpful, how to smile and be agreeable.  It was… It was…”

“Hateful,” said Sherlock, flatly.  “It was hateful and painful and you couldn’t bear it.”

Harry sat, nodding her head, her green eyes filling with tears of self-pity.  “It was hateful!” she repeated, with quiet desperation.

“Did he introduce you to your wife, as part of his helpfulness?” asked Sherlock, innocently.

Harry snorted.  “You could say that.  Her name is Clara.  They dated in Secondary school, but he wasn’t serious.  He always intended to go to university, everybody knew that.  She didn’t understand how casual he thought it was until he packed up and left.  He didn’t intend to be cruel.  He never does, but he thought she’d just find someone else.  How many boys are going to be a doctor in Peterborough do you think?”

“But she did find someone else.”

“Yeah, she’d stop by the shop, asking after John.  After a bit, we’d go out for a pint.  She got interested in the other Watson.”

“But it didn’t last.”

“No, nothing good ever lasts for me.  He got all the luck.”

“Well,” said Sherlock, quietly, “it’s time to change that, don’t you think?  Time to forge your own way.”

“Yes,” she answered, “it’s time to change that.”

They left the pub less than an hour later.  “Meet me at five a.m. Friday, at the Raven,” Sherlock directed.  “Sunrise is a bit after six and I must be at sea by then.  Bring what you need.  I meant what I said, if you’re not there, I will let Lestrade know about the finances of Watson and Company.”

“I’ll be there,” she said listlessly.  “I’m running out of time anyway.  I feel a little desperate and I’m so tired of being wrong.”

“Yes, I can believe that.  See you Friday.”  He turned away and then quickly back.  “By the way, do you have a laptop I could borrow?”

She considered a moment and answered, “I’m not headed home right now, but you could break into the office again.  There is a tablet computer in the bottom drawer of the tall file cabinet.  It’s probably different from what you’re used to but you’ll figure it out in a few minutes.”

“Good,” he responded.  “Thanks.”

They parted and neither one of them looked back.

=============================

Sherlock wandered the streets, listening to the sounds of shops closing and families finishing the evening meal.  The setting sun cast a golden glow on everything and his thoughts turned to John and his proposal.  The man’s sincerity was unquestionable, but his motives were obscure.  Was John acting to rescue his sister from the proverbial fate worse than death?  Was he hoping to dispatch Sherlock once they were at sea?  John had a confident strength and might believe he could overcome Sherlock, but that scenario was at odds with the sympathy and kindness the doctor wore so comfortably.  Sherlock could discern no reason the doctor would turn away from his respectable practice and his many friends for an uncertain life at sea with a near stranger. 

Turning back to the quay, he stopped at the Watson and Co. office, found the tablet and brought it back to his room at the Rose and Thorns.  In a few minutes he was searching newspaper archives, sifting the blather for the facts he required.  There was plenty of mystery about John Watson to keep him awake.

=======================================

As Thursday morning dawned, a light, northerly breeze stirred the flag at the marina.  Sherlock stretched his legs, cramped from an evening curled with the tablet computer, with a brief walk.  He checked on the _Corbeau Rapide_ and shared some gossip with the dim crewman, Don, who was keeping watch.  At half nine, he made his way down the quay to the coffee shop called Gleason’s.

John was waiting when he arrived, straddling the Bonneville, sipping one cup of coffee and holding up a second. “Here goes.  Two sugars, black, like your tea yesterday.  Hope that’s alright.”  He held on to the cup so that their fingers brushed as he peered into Sherlock’s face.  “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“The coffee is perfect.  Why would I sleep on shore?  I’ll have seven years to sleep at sea.  Are we going somewhere?”

“Yeah, but first, take your coffee inside and put these on,” John said with a shrug, slinging a small tote at Sherlock.  “Ask the barista to give you the key to the loo.”

“Why would I change my clothes?”

“Because you’ll freeze your bollocks off if those worsted trousers get soaked and I’m not offering to defrost them.”

For reasons Sherlock declined to examine, his ears immediately went pink and he could feel the blush spreading southward.  It seemed expedient to either head back to the Rose and Thorns in a strop or to go change.  He chose the latter.

The breeze was picking up as Sherlock exited Gleason’s.  John shoved the tote bag into a pannier, started the motorbike and waited for Sherlock to climb on.  They made quick progress along the quay and southward paralleling the beach.  They only traveled a couple of kilometers when John pulled into a car park above a small marina.  They dismounted, John grabbing a thermos and a small cooler and tossing a rubberized bag to Sherlock.  They headed to the beach.

“What is that?  Is that supposed to be a boat?” drawled Sherlock. They were approaching a mast with a battened and rainbow patterned main sail that appeared at first to be stuck directly into the sand.

“She’s a Hobie 16 and she gets up to 15 knots on a reach.  I already rigged her this morning so she’s ready to sail,” answered the doctor, as they reached the side of the catamaran.  “There’s no solid deck, just this trampoline between the two hulls.  She’s intended to be launched from the beach.  We’ll push her out in a moment.  Here, pull this on over those track bottoms and then pull the straps over your shoulders,” said John tossing Sherlock a harness and demonstrating by pulling on one of his own.  “You’ll want it fairly snug.  Put this life vest on over it, just in case.”

As Sherlock adjusted some straps, John stowed the thermos and lunch cooler in a flat bag lashed to the trampoline.  He then sat on one hull and matter-of-factly pulled up the left leg of his own track bottoms and began working his foot, shoe and all, off his leg.  Sherlock squatted down, staring, as the assemblage came off with a quiet pop.  “Hand me that dry bag you’re carrying, please,” John asked, apparently not perturbed at all by the intense scrutiny. 

Sherlock handed the dry bag to him.  “Why are you taking off your foot?”

“This is my posh foot,” John answered.  “It has a fancy titanium spring and shock absorber that are great for hiking or managing stairs, but it costs a mint and I won’t risk it in the salt water.  I’ve got a little blade of a running foot too, but it’s no good on the trampoline.  This one,” he gestured, pulling out a second foot, “costs a few quid by comparison.”

“Is that a bicycle seat?”

“Yeah, and part of a frame, bent up a bit.  These were developed for kids that lost a foot to a land mine.  You can make them anywhere.  You take off the seat upholstery, screw on a piece of wood with some tyre tread attached to the bottom and Bob’s your uncle.  It’s not so great for walking long distances and I need a strap to hold it on,” he demonstrated, smoothing a thick sock over his stump first, “But if it goes into the drink, it’s no big loss.”  He glanced into the tall man’s contorted face.  “I’m sorry, was that rude, changing feet in front of you?  Somehow I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Warmth bloomed in Sherlock’s chest at this sign of easy trust. He struggled to keep his face neutral as he responded, “No, no, that’s fine.  It’s an ingenuous idea. I was just pondering how it might be improved.”

John offered up a smile in turn and shoved the titanium and carbon fiber foot into the dry bag.  He carefully folded the top over and sealed it before attaching the bag to the mast.  John gave a quick lesson on attaching the harnesses to the trapeze lines, checking to be sure the pfd fit properly and everything was properly snug.

“Alright, roll up your trouser legs and let’s push her out.”

When the catamaran was knee deep in water, they pulled themselves aboard, sitting companionably at the rear of the trampoline as John explained how the little cat was different from larger monohulls.  Sherlock found the possibilities intriguing and kept up a flood of questions and suggestions until they were free of the harbor entrance.  They turned south and began a series of reaches.  After a bit, John handed off the tiller and let Sherlock give it a go, leaning back on his elbows and listening as Sherlock outlined his favorite racing strategies under different weather conditions.

They had been traveling an hour or so and Sherlock estimated they’d gone a dozen kilometers as the crow flies.  John took the tiller back and guided them into a shallow bay, letting the sail luff a bit as they slowed down and the rudders brushed the sandy bottom.  Resting in the bay, they consumed the sarnies and milky tea John had brought.  They sat facing in opposite directions, backs to the mast.  “Who taught you to sail?” Sherlock asked.

“Like you,” John said with a smile, “my grandfather, Gabe.  He learned from his father and taught me.”

“Did he teach Harriet as well?”

“Tried to, but she never saw the point.  She preferred power boats whenever she could catch a ride.”

“And your grandfathers trained you both aboard the long liner,” Sherlock recalled James telling him.

“Yeah, she worked two summers, I think, when she was seventeen and eighteen.  Those were good months.”

They let the conversation lag as the little boat rocked a bit. Sherlock sank into the present, using all of his self control to stop extrapolating what would happen next, what would happen tomorrow, trying to only breathe in and out into the now.  He was concentrating so fiercely, he missed the moment when John rolled up onto one hip and pressed his right shoulder to Sherlock’s left.  John brought his left hand up, cupping the back of Sherlock’s skull, tangling his fingers in the sable curls.  His blue eyes hooded, he brushed his nose against Sherlock’s ear, inhaling his scent.  John exhaled along the sensitive skin of Sherlock’s neck and then brushed his lips ever so lightly there.  Sherlock arched his neck and John left tiny, delicate kisses along its length.

A gust of wind caught the catamaran’s sail, throwing them hard against each other and then John was pushing away, smiling.  “I think we should continue this later,” he said, hitching his hips across the trampoline and back toward the tiller, “Maybe after a good bottle of wine.  Right now the conditions are nearly perfect.  Let me show you what this wee boat can do.”

“We took some short reaches getting here, but I’ll go for some longer tacks on the way back.  I’d like to get her flying just a bit.  You’ll stay closer to the bow and handle the jib while I manage the main and tiller.”  They turned the little boat to the northeast and headed back.

When they were managing six or seven knots, John coached Sherlock out on the trapeze.  At first, Sherlock felt as if his skull was only inches from the water’s surface, but then they pulled the sheets in just a bit as John adjusted for a closer haul and Sherlock felt the hull he was riding lift out of the water.  Soon they were skimming across the North Sea surface like a bird. 

The wind was picking up.  John signaled they would change tack and Sherlock came in to switch sides.  They moved smoothly, with few words, as if they had crewed together for years instead of hours.  Sherlock moved out over the starboard hull and after a few minutes, John joined him on the second trapeze line.  “I’m going to take a bit of a reach,” John yelled over the wind. “Move aft a bit to keep her bow up.”

They lifted out over the water, standing shoulder to shoulder on the hull.  Sherlock felt the decades fall away.  This was why he sailed, this perfect moment of flying, nothing else in his mind but the wind and the water and the sails like wings.  He laughed from the pure joy of it.  John had given this back to him and he turned to thank him.

Lapis lazuli eyes sparkled at him and he felt his heart leap in his chest.  John was grinning, his head thrown back, the love of challenge and speed in his eyes.  The sun caught the glints of silver in his dark gold hair.  The thin track bottoms clung to his strong thighs, braced against the boat hull. In that instant, Sherlock knew he was well and truly lost.  He turned his face back into the wind and pretended the moisture on his cheeks was nothing but sea foam.

Soon they were back in Peterborough harbor.  They furled the sails, pushed the cat up on the beach and dropped the mast. 

“I’ll give you a ride back to the inn,” John offered, while changing his foot again.  “Then we should have dinner.”

Sherlock, taken off guard by the suggestion, replied without thought, “Love to,” and hopped on the Bonneville.

Back at the Rose and Thorns, John grabbed the tote with Sherlock’s clothes and followed the tall man into the inn.   It took John a bit longer to negotiate the steep stairs of the old inn and Sherlock was inserting the antique key into the lock as the doctor came and stood patiently behind him.  In the cool hallway, the tall man became acutely aware of John’s warmth at his back and he clamped the key a bit harder to keep his hand from trembling.  The moment on the catamaran when John’s breath ghosted across his throat rose unbidden in his thoughts and he quickly pushed the door open, creating more space between them.   John, oblivious to the sudden turmoil, tossed the tote across the room and settled into an armchair to wait, saying only, “Hurry up then.  I’m famished,” and he closed his eyes.

Sherlock grabbed the tote and went to the en suite to change, grateful for a moment of privacy.  For the first time in his life, he felt gripped by trepidation that bordered on panic and the irony of it was bitter.  He was afraid of a short, lame doctor, a man so small Sherlock could tuck him under his chin, wrap him completely in long arms.  Glancing in the mirror, he hardly recognized himself.  His face was deeply flushed, his eyes wide and his breathing ragged.  “What are you doing,” he hissed to his reflection.  “Get a grip.  You’re gone tomorrow at dawn.  Why are you drawing this out?  Why are you pretending this is a possibility?  Send him away before you make a complete fool of yourself.”

Dressed in his usual attire, Sherlock felt slightly calmer as he opened the door and stepped back into the bedroom.  John’s head lolled in the armchair but he sat up as the door opened, flashing a grin.  “So, did I qualify?”

“What?  Qualify for what?” queried Sherlock, a bit petulantly.

“As your helmsman, of course.  Will you settle for me in place of Harry?  I know I’m a bit worse for wear since the accident, but you have to admit I did alright today.”

The thought of settling for John, the thought that there was nearly a world that didn’t contain John, suddenly ignited the earlier anxiety into an uncontainable fury.  “Why do you insist on calling it an accident?  Do you really think I am such an imbecile?”

John froze in the chair, his face a mask.  His breathing, deepened and accelerated in the small room, was the only sound.  Then he spoke, flat and low, “What are you saying?”

“You know exactly what I’m saying!  The loss of your leg was the result of a failed attempt on your life.  It was no accident at all!”

John surged from the chair.  “You’re wrong.  You weren’t there.  You don’t know anything about it!’

“Now you’re just lying!” shouted Sherlock.  The thought that John would lie to him made him irrationally angry.  He knew people lied to him and to each other all the time, but the thought that John was doing so was unbearable.  He loosed his anger and frustration in a torrent.  “Your grandfathers taught you to sail, to set and coil long lines and probably a dozen other skills you treasure,” snarled Sherlock.  “You’ve hardly forgotten a word they told you, including all the safety lectures they would have given their only grandson.  You have been the family protector since you were a child, conscientious to a fault.  You’re compelled to offer safety instructions to a man you know has been sailing single handed for nearly a century because you’re obsessive about protecting people.  You expect me to believe you mindlessly fouled the lines on a commercial fishing boat, knowing anyone might have been snared to their death by such carelessness.  You obsess about everything aboard a boat.  You would never make that mistake!”

“People change.  People make mistakes,” retorted John.

“Yes they do, and you did make a mistake, didn’t you?  You trusted someone you knew, you absolutely knew, was untrustworthy.  Someone who had already been fucking up her life.  Someone who had already flunked out of Aberdeen College and couldn’t manage to stay sober for her own grandfather’s funeral!”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“I won’t shut up!  You’re lying to me just the way you’ve been lying to your father and everyone else.  There was a dance that night at the Fisherman’s Federation.  Did you meet Clara, your old girlfriend, the day before?  Did she ask if you were going?  Did you know she had been dating your sister?  And what about Harry?  Had she ever waited for the boat to come in before?  How many years had it been since she offered to relieve you of the chores?   Weren’t you the least bit suspicious when she hustled you off?  Did she wink at you when she suggested you should hurry off to clean up?  When did you figure it out, John?  When the hooks dug into your leg the next morning?  When you hit the gunwale on your way into the sea?  When you lost consciousness as you were dragged under?”

“Stop it!” roared John and Sherlock fell silent.

“She’s my sister,” whispered John.  “They would have sent her away.  I love her.  My Da loves her!  What good would it have done to tell anyone?”

“It would have been the truth!”

“There’s more than one way to look at the truth.  The truth doesn’t need to be heartless. There’s room in the truth for mercy.”

“Did she ever give any indication she wanted your mercy?  Did she ever apologize?  Has she ever even acknowledged what she did?”

“No,” John answered quietly. “We’ve never spoken of it at all.”

“She doesn’t want your sympathy, John, it makes her feel weak.  She doesn’t want your forgiveness.  Every scrap of your sympathy and forgiveness is just one more tedious burden she has to bear, one more cause of resentment.  Can’t you see that?”

“Sometimes forgiveness is the only thing a person has to give, Sherlock.  It doesn’t matter how she accepts it or if she refuses it all together.”

“Your mercy is killing her, John.  You bleed away her pride and corrode her self-respect with your pity.  She’s hardly more than a husk now.  Sooner or later she’s going to give up.  Maybe she’ll just drink herself to death but with her temper I bet she won’t.  I bet she blows her own brains out and what’s more, I bet she blows yours out first. Do you want to take odds on that, John Watson?”

Tears were leaking from the corners of John’s eyes.  When he opened them again he whispered, “Damn you.  Damn you, Sherlock Holmes!”  John wheeled away, staggered to the door, threw it open, and ran from the room.

Sherlock stood statue still, then moved and closed the door.  He leaned his forehead against the panel, his eyes closed.  “I was damned before I met you, John Watson,” he whispered.

=============================

pfd = personal flotation device = life vest

Trampoline = the polypropylene canvas deck of a small catamaran

Trapeze – to maximize the speed of a catamaran, you allow the wind to tip it up on one of the two narrow hulls, which reduces drag, but you counter-balance this by standing straight out from the side of the opposite hull, suspended over the water in a harness and attached to a wire called the trapeze…  one of the world’s biggest rushes, no kidding.

==============================


	6. Revelations, Present and Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the chapter title says.... This is the ante-penultimate chapter, fyi.

Time had stopped when John stormed out, taking all the warmth of the day with him. Sherlock lay on the bed of his room at the inn and stared at the blank ceiling above.  He had three choices.

 He could leave immediately; ready the _Corbeau Rapide_ and head back to sea alone.  It had happened that way more often than not in the past.  He was kept ashore this time by the certainty that Harriet’s slowly unraveling self-control was near its end and that both she and John would be the victims of her addiction and despair soon.  Leaving both siblings in Peterborough was unacceptable. 

He could leave at dawn with Harry as arranged.  By taking Harriet with him he could give John this gift, the gift of his life, even if John never thanked him, even if they never saw each other again.

The third choice was to accept John’s proposal and take him aboard the Raven.  Sherlock longed for this choice as he had never hungered for anything in the last ninety-one years.  For just a moment he let himself imagine it:  John at the helm of the Raven as Sherlock plotted a course to the Seychelles, John rocking in a hammock on deck under a southern sky as Sherlock played the Chaconne in D minor, John and he in the narrow bunk of his cabin, John’s strong hands on his shoulders, his hips, pressing him down into the thin mattress…  Sherlock shuddered and rolled to his side, sick with longing. 

It would not be enough.  Sherlock would never be enough for John.  In weeks or months John would grow tired of Sherlock’s temper, his silences, his manic recitations.  John’s fascination with Sherlock’s genius would wear thin under the day-to-day reality of Sherlock’s possessiveness, his rudeness, his obsessions.  John would grow tired of Sherlock and John would leave, taking all the sunlight with him.  He knew that anguish well enough.

 He closed his eyes, shutting out the world as best he could.  He reassembled his memories of the last two days, preserving them for all the future years of loneliness.  He caressed each moment in his mind as he would never caress the man himself.

His reverie was broken by a firm knock at the door.  Sherlock ran through the possibilities.  It was most likely Harry, come to break their agreement.  John would have gone to her, warned her.  Perhaps she was coming after Sherlock instead.  He rolled from the bed, strode to the door and threw it open.

It was John.  He was freshly showered and changed, smelling of mint and tea tree oil.  His face was grim as he pushed into the room.

“It was in hospital,” he said without preface.  “You asked me when I knew.  Obviously, I knew she had coiled the lines, but I did assume it was a mistake at first, a genuine accident on her part.  The problem with recovery from an amputation is you have a lot of time where you can’t do much.  At first they tried some reconstruction, but it was no good and…  It was a mess is all and I had a lot of time to think. “

“She never came to see me.  Everyone else came…  Mates from Secondary school and from Uni, former teachers, blokes from the Fisherman’s Federation that hardly knew me.  Grandfather Gabe brought me his wood working tools and I started carving in earnest, to keep my sanity.  Da came whenever he wasn’t on the boat, but she never came, not once.”

“I remembered we had a party before I went off to Edinburgh.  People spilled out onto the quay from the offices.  It seemed like the whole village was there, except Harry.  The place was awash with lager and whiskey and Harry never showed up.  I thought about the dance, about Clara, about the drinking, and suddenly I knew.  I think Gabe knew as well.  He never left us alone together after that.  I don’t know about Da…  I can’t imagine how he could bear the thought.” 

“So,” John said, as if summing up for a jury, “there’s one solution for this.  You take me with you.  Harry never has to see me again and I’m safe at sea.  It’s simple and logical.”  He stared at Sherlock as if daring contradiction.

Sherlock swallowed, the resolve of a few minutes past dissolving under John’s gaze. “You hardly know me,” he said through the lump in his throat.

John stared at him intently and then pronounced, “I know you’re brilliant and rude and impulsive and a bit mad.  I know you love to laugh but find yourself depressed more often than not. I know you don’t eat enough and you hate sleeping because you hate relinquishing control.  I know you see everything and it causes a ferocious cacophony in your head that feels unbearable.  I know you feel things more deeply than most people but you hate to talk about it.  I know you value silence, but you hate being alone.  I know someone abandoned you and left a hole in your heart that still hasn’t healed.  Is there really a lot more you think I need to know?”

Sherlock turned away.  For several pounding heartbeats, John was sure he would run away, but then the deep voice said, “I play the violin at all hours, and I don’t do washing up.”

“Well, we’ll just have to negotiate then.  Come to mine.  We’ll talk over supper.”

The sun was still up as they took the Bonneville back to John’s surgery.  His flat was on the floor above the office.  John let them into the waiting room.  “Wait here for a mo’,” he instructed, disappearing into one of the examining rooms.

He returned with something in his hand.  “Here, a gift…” he said, pressing something warm and smooth into Sherlock’s palm.

“What…?”  In the dim light, Sherlock could see he held a model of a sailing ship.  The hull was black enamel and the sails ochre.  Her mast was as tall as she was long.  Even in miniature, she was a beauty.  “It’s the Raven.  You never saw her before Tuesday night.  How did you know…?”

“I’ll explain upstairs.  There’s something you need to see.”

John opened another door to a staircase and led them up to the first floor.  At the top of the stairs was a small kitchen.  A bottle of red wine sat on the counter in front of them.  “Look around while I open this,” John said.

The room adjacent was like a loft, with the north and east walls nearly all glass.  The setting sun gave a buttery cast to the white walls and beige tiled floor.  A leather sofa and a small table with two side chairs were nearly the only traditional furniture in the room.  A tall, split top workbench stood near the windows. 

 John materialized from the kitchen and pressed a bistro glass of red wine into Sherlock’s hand.  “I’ll be right back,” John said.  “I’m heating up some curry if that’s alright.  Loo is down the hall on the right.”

Large crates and woodcarvings that were mostly finished took up the rest of the floor space in the large room.  Two of the carvings were taller than Sherlock.  They glowed in the honeyed light, casting shadows across the floor and up the walls.  Collectively, they reminded Sherlock of Expressionist works he had seen before the war.  Examined head on, they were pure abstraction, but as he turned toward or away, each piece took on a sense of exuberant motion.  The movement enhanced the forms until Sherlock saw a soaring osprey in one piece, a breaching right whale in another. A third work was built around narrow arches and, as Sherlock walked through an arch, a swirling flock of red knots was wheeling around him. These pieces were all finished with linseed oil, but one clamped on the bench was more recently begun, a sixty centimeter truncated cone of walnut.  As he circled it, a crow awkwardly hopped along the verge, bright eyed, searching, ready to fly up, but crows don’t have crowns of curls, their primaries don’t curl into the air like long fingers.

John returned, carrying two bowls of red curry, each with a slice of naan balanced on top.  He passed off one bowl with a shy smile.  “Well,” he said, “What do you think?”

“You’re a sculptor.  You’re a doctor and a sculptor…”

“Yeah, ta, I like to think so.  I’ve only sold a few of the larger pieces, one in Edinburgh at a gallery there and two through an agent I knew from university in London.  The three about to be crated are headed to Aberdeen for a show of local artists, first time I’ve shown anything close to home…”

“How did I not see this?” Sherlock said, peeved.

“Well, you’ve rather been focused on the darker aspects of my life history.  You missed some of the cheerier bits.  These aren’t actually what I brought you to see, though.  Finish your curry.”

Sherlock roamed the room for a while and then settled with John at the small table.  John answered some questions about how he chose types of wood and finishes, but they were mostly quiet, letting their words fade with the light.

When they had both finished eating and the first glass of wine was gone, John stood, looking suddenly nervous and said, “I know this sounds suspicious, but I want to show you something in my bedroom.  I promise not to pounce.”

They moved to the back of the building and John opened the door to a small, dim, nearly Spartan room.  He swept his hand toward the wall opposite the bed, indicating a painting on the wall.  The canvas wasn’t new or large, but the subject leapt from the surface and Sherlock stood in shock.  The _Corbeau Rapide_ rode a rough sea under a stormy sky, her red sails glowing as if illuminated, but even more than the subject, the style stole away his breath.

It was impossible.  Sherlock knew this style, this brushwork, like his own signature.  He spun on his heel.  “How did you get that painting?” he demanded, accusingly.

“It’s a long story,” said John, gesturing to a chair.  “Can you just sit and listen for a bit?”

Sherlock sat, trying to look composed and failing miserably.

“I never met my great-grandfather,” began John.  “He died just before dawn on the day I was born.  I was named for him.  Family stories say he was a quiet man, always haunted by what he saw in the war.  My grandfather, Gabriel, was the only one of his children to survive.  Unlike his father, Gabriel loved to tell a good story.  One of his favorites was how he came to England during the war.  The family had moved in the spring of ’42 from Nice to a flat in Paris, hoping to disappear among so many strangers.”

“Gabriel had been spending a week of the July holiday with friends when the gendarme began rounding people up across the city.  He was eleven.  The house he was in was not targeted.  Grand-Pere ran back toward home and saw people being marched to the Velodrome.  He made his way through the alleys, but by the time he reached their flat, it was empty.  Doors had been torn off cupboards and all valuables looted.  Not knowing where else to go, he crawled under the only bed in the flat and hid.  Great-grandfather found him there after dark.  They made their way out of the city using stolen papers, but it was probably their blonde hair and blue eyes that saved their skins.”

“A sympathizer gave them bicycles and they slowly progressed to the coast, hoping to find family members that might help them outside Calais, but the estate there had been taken over by Gestapo and there was no sign of any relatives.  Calais itself was leveled and the old dock area was crawling with railway guns and Germans.  They hid in some of the older boathouses, moving east at night to the less populated part of the coast.  They found an old sailing Dory that needed some repair and worked on it, hiding by day.  One night when the moon was nearly full, they put out to sea and headed for Dover.”

“Great-grandfather was afraid to set the sail because it would make them more visible.  By the time they were out in the sea proper, they were fighting southwesterlies and a strong tide.  The sail, when they raised it, held for an hour or so, but the canvas was rotten and they lost it long before there was any sight of land.  They were navigating by the stars and great-grandfather just kept rowing west.  The Channel current was so strong, it was impossible to tell how far they had come.  Sometime in the small hours, the wind went calm and they were facing a dense fog bank.”

“The word in France was that English coastal patrols were turning back boats for fear of infiltrators.  They had no clue how far north they had been driven.  They were sopped and shivering and Gabriel told me he thought they would never reach land alive.  Then they saw the other ship.”

“Gabriel said it just materialized in front of them, a sailing yacht with a black hull and ochre sails.  It was so close; they could see the face of the helmsman, the only man on board.  Grand-pere said he looked like Lord Byron, with dark, wild curls and a pale face.  He said the man stared at great-grandfather for long minutes and then waved his hand, as if to say, ‘Follow me’, and turned his ship into the fog bank.”

“The ghost ship, as Gabriel called it, led them through the fog to a deserted stretch of beach somewhere north of Deal.  Great-grandfather powered them through the surf, the hull cracked on the shingle as he pulled Gabriel to shore.  When they looked back out to sea, the red sails were disappearing back into the fog.”

“With much luck, they eventually made their way north to Aberdeen.  They both went to work with Angus Watson.  The three of them bought a boat together after the war and started the business here in Peterborough.  They stuck with just using Angus’s name and called it Watson and Company.  The Lippman name was too obviously Jewish for two refugees to feel comfortable with.  Twenty six years later, Angus’s son James married Gabriel’s daughter Elsbeth, and we all became Watsons anyway.”

John’s eyes had never left Sherlock’s face during the long tale, but Sherlock had closed his own eyes, as if watching the story play out behind the lids.  He opened them now.  “John… Your name is John,” he whispered.

“Hyphenated French names don’t go down so well in primary school, yeah?  I’ve been called John most of my life, but the name on my birth certificate is Jean-Jacques Watson.”

Sherlock spun from the room, lurching for the hallway and the staircase beyond, but John was faster and he had years of strength in his shoulders.  The taller man was brought to a stop.  “No,” Sherlock whispered, eyes closed, “not again.”

“No,” John agrees, “not again.  I am not my great-grandfather.  More importantly, I am not a nineteen-year-old man-boy frightened of being disinherited and cut off from his family.  I’m not an artist depending on the largesse of wealthy patrons.  I’m not a French Jew excluded by English society.  I’m a thirty five year old Scottish doctor with his own practice.  I’ve survived medical school, a near drowning and amputation and a half dozen years of numbing loneliness, not to mention some quite nasty art critics.  I live in a world where being gay isn’t a crime or even a sin to lots of people.  I live in a world of kind and ordinary people but I have never met anyone half as amusing, half as mad, half as brilliant, as you are.  If you think you’re walking out of here right now, you have seriously underestimated me.”

In the quiet hallway, the only sound was the distant surf and the bell buoys.  John grinned, “Besides, I haven’t finished my story.  Com’ere,” he said, pulling Sherlock back into the bedroom.

Back in the dim light, John let go of Sherlock’s wrist and crossed to the painting.  “I spent months away from home during rehab,” he started to explain.  “Gabriel wanted me to have something in my room to remind me of the family.  He gave me this to keep.  So far as we know, this is one of only two paintings Jean-Jacques made in Scotland.  I brought it with me when I moved to London for my GP training and the frame got a bit damaged.  That’s when I discovered there was a second work concealed in the same frame.”  Taking the painting from the wall, John turned it over and handed it to Sherlock.

The portrait of the Raven was done in oils, but the work seen from the back was a gouache over a pencil sketch.  A young man was turning toward the artist, three quarters of his face in view, accentuating his high cheekbones.  His almond shaped eyes were storm grey, one eyebrow arched and his mouth half curled in a knowing smile.  Dark curls, nearly black, were tossed by the wind.  In the background, the Egypt Point lighthouse near Cowes was the only landmark.  Written in black ink above and below the painting were two phrases in French: _Premier amour…_ _Premier regret…_

John whispered the words aloud, “First love…  First regret…”

Sherlock raised his face to John’s, his eyes sad but calm.  “In ’42 I didn’t understand the magnitude of what was happening in France and elsewhere.  I came ashore in Copenhagen in 1943 and learned about HaShoah.  I thought then he must have died. Remembering that night in the channel, I decided he and his son must have been ghosts, come to haunt me.  I couldn’t speak to him; I could only lead them to shore.  I was certain he died hating me.   I never knew he survived.”

John took a step closer.  “I grew up listening to Gabe’s stories.  I’ve been curious about you for years.  I knew what you looked like, but not what you sounded like.  I knew that Jean-Jacques loved you, but not why.  I reasoned out why he left you, but I knew that he couldn’t forget you.  When you stepped into the light of the quay Tuesday night, I recognized you.  It felt…  I felt like you had finally come home.  I know that’s irrational, but it’s true.”

“My life stopped being purely rational ninety-one years ago.  I have resented that every day since, until tonight.”

“The paintings are yours, if you want them,” offered John.  “I’m going to make some tea, would you like a cup?”  Sherlock said nothing and John left him alone with his memories for a while.

================================

_HaShoah – the Holocaust that claimed the lives of approximately six million Jews.  In addition, roughly 11 million Slavs, Poles, Romani, Russians, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, and disabled people were targeted, imprisoned, sometimes used as human experiments and killed by the Nazi regime.  The Vichy government was fully cooperative with the Germans in France, although many French citizens concealed victims and aided their escape._

==============

_Author’s note - If you are curious, John’s sculptures are neo-expressionist…  sort of Henry Moore meets Andy Goldsworthy, fyi._

_=================_

_Next chapter, finally, some pouncing…._


	7. Bedtime Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it says in the title... Finally!

Warning for over the top romanticism here and a bit of sex as well.  If that’s not your cuppa, feel free to wait for the finale in chapter 8.  I promise to catch you up.

======================

 John took his time making the tea.  When he returned to the bedroom the paintings were back on the wall.  He silently offered a mug and sipped from his own.

“Thank you for showing them to me,” said Sherlock, “But I think they should stay here.  This is where he made his second life…  or maybe he would have said his third.  I’m …  gratified he survived and that he remembered me with …  affection.  You said there is a second painting?”

“Yeah, Harry has it.  Gabriel left it to her.  It’s an interior; he told us it was the parlor of the flat in Nice.  Our great-grandmother Elise is sitting in the window, reading.  It’s the only picture of her we have.  So… he did paint both of you from memory….”

“Yes,” mused Sherlock, “but my portrait remained hidden.  He never…  Ah, well.”

“I’m sorry,” responded John.  “I’m truly sorry it didn’t work out.”

“You of all people shouldn’t be sorry,” said Sherlock, skeptically.  “If I’d had my way, you would never have been born.”

“Well, as you say, I’m sure Harry would have preferred that.  She’s the one who takes after the Watsons.  I always looked more like Mum and Gabriel.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, searching the small man’s face.  “I saw the resemblance the first night, but put it down to coincidence.   It was un-nerving, actually.”

“And is it still un-nerving?” asked John, stepping in close.

“No,” said Sherlock softly.  “No, it’s not.  It’s like…  what did you say?  It’s like coming home.”

John wordlessly took Sherlock’s untouched tea and placed both mugs on the bureau.  He turned back and slowly raised his hand to Sherlock’s face, running a thumb over an impossible cheekbone and brushing his fingertips through the dark curls.  He stepped closer until the fronts of their shirts touched and gently pulled Sherlock down until their lips brushed lightly.  Then he eased away a fraction.

   “I am a different man, Sherlock, we both know that.  I could never take his place; that’s not what I’m suggesting.  But I know you better than any man now living and I’ve been drawn to you since you first deduced me on Tuesday night.  All I am asking is that, if you feel at all the same, you give it a chance.  Give us a chance.”

“You are more alike than you know, truthfully, but you’re also very different.  You’re right, he was hardly more than a boy and you’re a man, a kinder, wiser man, but Jean-Jacques walked away for some very good reasons.  You should walk away from this as well.  You could do far better than me, John Watson, so very much better.”

“I really think you should let me be the judge of that,” said John, sliding his strong hands to slender hips, brushing fingertips along the top of an elegant arse.  He turned his face up to say;  “You should realize tip-toes are awkward for me, so some cooperation here would be welcome, you tall git.”

Sherlock hesitated only a heartbeat before bending down to capture John’s mouth with his own.  It was a fierce assault, as decades of hunger drove his desire.  Sherlock wound his long arms tightly across the doctor’s strong shoulders and slender waist, crushing them together.  Desperate moans escaped his throat as he licked his way into John’s mouth, his tongue firm and demanding.  John opened his lips to the assault, accepting the need that bordered for a moment on madness.

John felt the hardness pressing into his belly and rocked against it, murmuring encouragement as Sherlock’s mouth moved to his throat, biting the tender skin beneath his ear.  Easing back for just a moment, John slipped his hand between them, firmly cupping Sherlock’s cock through the worsted trousers while sweeping his thumb along its length and over its head.  Instantly, he felt the tall man gasp and then shudder, his back stiffening as he stopped breathing altogether for a moment. 

John pulled his face away a bit to stare at the man in his arms.  Sherlock’s cheeks flamed red and his eyes refused to meet John’s gaze.  “Was that, umm?”

“Yes,” hissed Sherlock, into his shoulder,  “How mortifying, like a schoolboy.”

“Hey, hey, look at me!  Come on, I’m kind of chuffed!  Nobody ever got that enthusiastic over me before.”

“I didn’t expect…  It’s never been quite so…  unpredictable.”

“Yeah well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Enthusiasm should never be an embarrassment.  Well, unless you were planning on wishing me goodnight and walking out right away.  That would be disappointing, to say the least.”

“I would prefer to stay a while longer and perhaps be of some assistance,” said Sherlock, shyly. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

“In that case,” said John, chuckling and running his hands up the soft linen of Sherlock’s shirt, “perhaps we should get a bit more comfortable.  Do you want to use the loo?”

“Might be practical,” conceded Sherlock.

“There’s a dressing gown on the back of the door, if you want to borrow it.  Be a bit short on you but it’s chilly in here.  I’ll get us each another glass of wine.”

When Sherlock returned to the bedroom, the lights were off and John was already under the duvet.  He looked tenser than Sherlock had ever seen him.  The prosthetic foot was tucked beneath the bed, barely visible in the dim light from the hallway.  Sherlock sat on the edge of the mattress and turned on the bedside lamp.  “I want to see you, John.  I want to see all of you.”

John bit his lower lip and glanced away.  “It’s not pretty.  It looks odd, asymmetrical.”

“Symmetry is over rated as a measure of beauty.  All artists know that.  Besides, you didn’t mind my looking on the beach.”

“It’s a bit different when you’re clothed, you know.  Besides, I learned a long time ago it makes some people feel squidgy.  It’s better to find out before you invite them into your bed.”

“Squidgy, is that a medical term, doctor?  And are you feeling a bit squidgy yourself?  Second thoughts, perhaps?”

“No, just a bit of cowardice is all.”  John rolled over on his side, reaching to press his palm against Sherlock’s sternum where the dressing gown drew apart.  “You’re quite beautiful, you know, turning heads all over town.  I feel a bit second rate next to you.”

Sherlock pushed the duvet down to John’s waist and brushed his fingertips over the biceps of the smaller man, lightly running them up to heavily muscled shoulders.  “There is nothing second rate here,” he murmured.  “This is quite first class.”

The light touch was enough to dispel some of John’s self consciousness and he pushed himself up, wrapping his arms around the thin torso.  He tasted the extravagant lips and ran his tongue lightly over them, teasing his way inside.  Sherlock inhaled deeply and tightened his grip in response.  Firmly but gently he pushed John back into the mattress.  “Let me,” he said, pressing kisses now into John’s hair, “please, let me.”

He straddled John’s hips and reached up again to the sculpted shoulders, then pulling his hands down over the firm pectorals.  He slid his long fingers along his beloved’s ribs, pausing to brush his thumbs over the dusky nipples until John arched his back in response.  Leaving his hands to caress the doctor’s chest, he scooted backward, nipping small kisses on that muscular belly.   “I want to touch you everywhere.  I want to memorize your scent, your texture, your taste.”  Each phrase was punctuated with small nips and tiny flicks of the tongue. ”Let me, John, please, let me.”

Sherlock lifted up enough to push the duvet further down until he could delve his tongue into John’s navel, eliciting a brilliant tenor groan.  He licked down further until he could press his nose into the crease at his lover’s groin, inhaling deeply.  As he turned his head, his curls brushed lightly against John’s now throbbing erection and the doctor gasped and sobbed out, “Sherlock!”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock whispered, lifting John’s right leg to kiss along his inner thigh, “Say my name. Say my name a thousand times.”

John’s fingers caressed his shoulders and then his right hand carded among the sable curls, trembling in need.  Sherlock turned his head and nuzzled John’s sac, feeling the soft hair, drowning in the spicy scent, and moaning his own desire.  He rutted against John’s left leg, his own cock thickening again urgently.  He brought his hand down to lift and massage John’s testicles firmly as he laved his tongue broadly against the tender, satin space beneath.

“Nnngh, Sherlock, Sherlock, I need…” and John was pulling at his shoulders, pulling Sherlock back into his arms, rubbing his small, strong hands along his back.  “I need you here, I want, oh fuck, I want…” and they were kissing again, tongues entwined and mouths pressing in desperation as if the only oxygen in the room came from the other’s mouth.

“What do you want, John?  Anything, you can have anything.”

He felt John’s mouth smile against his cheek.  “Anything is a dangerous word,” he chuckled.

“And yet, here I am.  What can I give you?”

“Yourself,” John murmured in his ear.  “I want all of yourself.  I want to feel you inside of me, Sherlock.”

John felt the heated face withdraw from his own and saw Sherlock turn away.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.  That was too much for our first time.  Just touch me then; I love your touch…”

“Hush,” Sherlock whispered, roughly.  “You surprised me, that’s all.  I didn’t hope for so much.”  The kisses turned gentle, delicate, as if he had been presented with an unimaginable, ephemeral miracle.

“Have you done this before?” asked Sherlock, pressing up on his forearms.

“Just a few times, in London, with the fellow who became my agent, actually.  We are good as friends but not so much at this.  It never felt like this before.  And you?”

“Yes, at Cambridge, there was quite a lot of opportunity for practice, even then.”

John huffed a laugh.  “Well, sorry I don’t have a Oxbridge arse.”

“And thank God for that… “ Sherlock responded with a quick smile.  “Do you have any … oil or…”

John rolled over and pulled a bottle from the nightstand drawer.  “Here, modern equivalent… non-staining,” he said with a smirk.

Sherlock palmed the bottle and bent for another kiss, then rolled to the side as John made a moan of disappointment.  “Roll on your side for just a moment,” he said, as he rearranged some pillows and then clicked the bottle open.  A breath later he was pulling John’s back against his chest.  “I can touch you like this without straining you.”  He reached one graceful hand between John’s parting thighs as he circled the other underneath and around John’s waist to his leaking erection.  “Shh,” kissing the shell of John’s ear and running one finger firmly down John’s length, “How close are you?  Can you take this?”

“No, God, aaaah!  Very close…”

“Shhh, hold on just a bit, let me get you ready,” and he looked over John’s shoulder as he firmly held the deep rose shaft at it’s base.  “Look at you.  You are so beautiful, so ready. I love the feel of you in my hand, so warm and full.”

John threw his head back against Sherlock’s chest, moaning, barely aware as one long finger breached his opening, gently following the curve of his sacrum.  A moment later a thumb barely touched his crown and lightly brushed his slit.  He pressed back with a shout, braced against Sherlock’s chest as a second finger slid in, easing him open.

“John, John, you are so strong, my arms are full of you. I want to consume you, keep you forever.  Take just one more for me.”  A third finger joined the other two and John was trembling with tension, both supported and tenderly teased by the two hands holding him so intimately.  “Almost there, my love,” and John wondered how he still was coherent when John could feel Sherlock’s extravagant length pushing insistently at the small of his back.  John relaxed into the stretch and then his world whited out as Sherlock gently straightened his fingers, pressing forward into his prostate.  “Now, now we’re ready, love,” and John felt bereft as those lovely fingers slipped free.

In the next heartbeat, Sherlock was sitting up; his back pushed into a pillow against the headboard as he nearly lifted John onto his lap.  They were face to face now and John was dizzy with desire.  “Take me,” Sherlock said, wrapping John’s strong hand around his own long, slender, purpling shaft. “Take as much of me as you want,” and he cradled his hands around John’s arse, supporting some of the smaller man’s weight.

John took a deep, steadying breath and gazed down as he positioned his lover’s cock at his entrance, then he looked directly into Sherlock’s storm grey eyes as he steadily sank balls deep, the twinge and stretch forgotten as he absorbed the look of bliss on the angular face.  Sherlock’s smile was beatific, but then he growled, “For Christ’s sake, move!”

John balanced himself with his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders.  He rose and fell as slowly as he dared, trying to draw this first, glorious love-making out as long as possible, but soon Sherlock’s hands were clenching, trying to lift and pull him faster, harder.  “Fuck me,” John whispered, brokenly, “Fuck me hard.”

 The tendons in Sherlock’s long neck stood out as he strained to keep his eyes open, focused on John’s face.  “Touch yourself now, now,” he demanded, low and urgent.  John grabbed his own shaft, pulling firmly as he felt Sherlock push up into him and then spasm, his eyes clenching shut.  “John, John,” he shouted, his deep voice breaking and echoing off the walls.  Then Sherlock’s arms were wrapped around John’s waist, pulling them impossibly close together, pressing John’s length tightly between them, and John followed his lover into the crashing waves.

==============

Some time later, cleaned with bedside wipes and the covers pulled up, Sherlock pulled him close and a quiet John pillowed his head on the pale chest, brushing his lips briefly against the smooth skin.  “You’re pensive, suddenly.  Is something wrong?” Sherlock asked, his voice tinged with worry.

“Nothing is wrong.  Everything is very right.  I was concerned, before…  I thought when we actually made love, it might bother you, at first, that you might feel like I was Jean-Jacques’ doppelganger or…  I don’t know...”

“You thought in the heat of the moment, I might confuse you with him.”

“Yeah, sorry, silly, I guess.”

“It is foolish, though not for the reason you think.”  Sherlock gently slid out from under John so he could look directly into his face.  “I was gratified to know he cared for me, as I said, but you should probably know that our relationship was nearly… Victorian in some ways.  He loved me, I’m sure of that now, but he never stopped being ashamed of loving me.  Even in 1922 there were clubs in London where we could have been together, danced, for instance, but he would never go with me.  We kissed and caressed in private and he would let me… pleasure him, but he could never bring himself to touch me anywhere below the waist.  It made him anxious, unclean, he said, sometimes even ill...  You might say, squidgy.  I hoped it would change, over time but, well, we ran out of time, didn’t we?”

“He was an idiot to let you go,” John said with feeling.

“No, your wrong there!  The world and I have both changed; it was a dangerous, a possibly ruinous choice then.  What you and I just shared, without fear or shame, no one could imagine that kind of acceptance, even self-acceptance, back then.  No man has ever touched me, or allowed me to touch them, with the confidence, the humor even, that you have shown tonight.  This feels like a dream to me, John.”

“It’s not a dream; I hope it’s what the rest of our lives look like,” John said, forthrightly.  Suddenly realizing how much he had revealed, the small man blushed and stammered, “Sorry, I’m sorry.  That’s jumping the gun, I know.”

“Someone recently told me that enthusiasm was nothing to apologize for,” said Sherlock, smiling, and then he leaned in for another long, promising kiss.

John snuggled in closer again.  “Yeah, well, if we’re getting up before sunrise, we should probably get some sleep.  The planning can wait until we’re both aboard the Raven, right?”

Sherlock placed several slow kisses in John’s hair and then responded, “Any more planning can definitely wait.  Go to sleep, beloved.”

The endearment sang in his ears as Sherlock traced gentle circles on his back.  Feeling shagged out, well cherished and completely safe, John drifted to sleep.

With a contentment he had never known, Sherlock listened to John’s soft breathing and continued to gently rub his back as John slept through a short dream cycle.  When the doctor relaxed back into a deeper sleep, Sherlock silently slipped from the bed and dressed.

He found a pad of paper and a pencil on the bureau near John’s mobile and carried them out to the kitchen.  He wrote a short note and left it lightly on the pillow near John’s head.  His lips quirked in a bittersweet smile as he let his eyes take their fill of the last lover he would ever know.  Finally, with cat-like stealth, he left the bedroom and the flat.  It was just three when he made his way down to the docks to meet Harry.

“Dearest John,” his note read, “You have given me more joy tonight than I have experienced in a lifetime, enough to last a century at least.  You deserve a richer life than I can give you.  Please forgive me for not saying goodbye.  All my love, forever, Sherlock”

=====================================

Conclusion will be posted by next week...


	8. Races and Resolutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shamelessly romantic finale in which all loose ends are placed in a large bow for you wonderful readers... at least I hope so...

_ Thursday night, from Chapter 7: _

_With a contentment he had never known, Sherlock listened to John’s soft breathing and continued to gently rub his back as John slept through a short dream cycle.  When the doctor relaxed back into a deeper sleep, Sherlock silently slipped from the bed and dressed._

_He found a pad of paper and a pencil on the bureau near John’s mobile and carried them out to the kitchen.  He wrote a short note and left it lightly on the pillow near John’s head.  His lips quirked in a bittersweet smile as he let his eyes take their fill of the last lover he would ever know.  Finally, with cat-like stealth, he left the bedroom and the flat.  It was just three when he made his way down to the docks to meet Harry._

_“Dearest John,” his note read, “You have given me more joy tonight than I have experienced in a lifetime, enough to last a century at least.  You deserve a richer life than I can give you.  Please forgive me for not saying goodbye.  All my love, forever, Sherlock”_

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Friday, before dawn...

Once he left John’s flat, Sherlock took his time walking the streets of Peterborough.  The town glowed beneath the gibbous moon, still riding high in the western sky.  He wanted to memorize the place, its smells and sounds and textures, as he had memorized John last night.  He paced Broad Street, walked back to the Different Kettle, found The Dolphin, John’s favorite restaurant and then slowly made his way back down to the waterfront.  He sat on one of the pilings outside of Gleason’s and closed his eyes, arranging his memories into a map he could use to reconstruct these extraordinary days.

It was just before five when Sherlock heard the sound of hard wheels rolling along the quay and looked up to see Harry pushing a utility cart from the fish house containing a large plastic bin, a cardboard box and two oversize duffels.  When she reached the captain she looked up at him and shook her head grimly.  “Are we really doing this then?”

“It would seem so.  Let’s go aboard, Ms. Watson.  Allow me to assist you.”

Before he loaded her gear, Sherlock checked his pocket for the letter he had written to Lestrade Wednesday night, documenting Harriet’s embezzlement and her attack on John.  There would be no prosecution for the latter, of course, but it would make sure that Lestrade pursued the former charges.  John would be safe and that was what mattered.  He would hand the letter off to the last watchman if Harriet didn’t stay aboard.

The _Corbeau_ Rapide had been put out on a mooring Thursday.  Sherlock piled Harry’s things in a dory, helped her in and rowed out to the larger boat. Ken had taken this last watch.  He sat, back to the mast, dozing in a sleeping bag, but he startled awake and scrambled upright as the dory pulled alongside.  “Morning, Captain,” he rasped out, throwing over lines to secure the small boat as well as a rope ladder.

Sherlock handed up Harry’s things as she steadied the dory against the larger hull and then he helped her up the ladder.   He scrambled up after her.

Once on deck, he addressed Ken first.  “The silver is already in James Watson’s hands.  He agreed to manage the sale of it and distribute payment.  I assume you trust him.”

“Nobody better.  Ross told me you managed the hand off yesterday.  You want some help getting ready to cast off?”

“Please.”  Turning to Harry, he said, “You can take the forward cabin, I never use it.”  He pointed toward the bow.  “Well, hardly ever…  anyway, store your gear there.”  She shrugged and turned to the forward hatch.

The two men ran through the normal checks of the hull and pumps and rigging in a matter of minutes.  The main sail was already raised and the foresails would wait until they were at sea.  They were nearly ready to leave.

Harry was back on deck.  “Holmes,” she announced, “there’s stuff in that cabin…”

Running his mind over the list of things stored there, ( _Dinoflagellate toxin concentrate samples, the Sumatran rat skeleton, the Maori paddles, is that where the potassium nitrate is?…)_ he decided he might better manage it himself.

“Never mind, I’ll straighten up once we’re at sea, just leave things on deck for now.  Oh, and stay out of the galley!”  Turning to Ken, he said, “Raise the anchor and then get yourself to shore.  We’re ready to sail.”

Soon Ken wished them farewell, then he was down the ladder and casting off the dory.  Sherlock had been honest when he told John The Raven nearly sailed herself.  She was facing into the wind while at anchor, but two good hauls readied the mainsail and with the anchor secured, a light touch on the tiller would pivot her into a broad reach toward the harbor opening. The channel was wide here and Sherlock cast only a passing glance at the navigation chart as his ship gained speed.  Peterborough was behind him now.  He kept his eyes on the breakwater ahead and tried to think of nothing at all.

The gentle swells of the harbor were rushing past the hull and the breeze was picking up as dawn approached. They were halfway across the harbor and dory was several hundred meters astern when Sherlock heard a faint call over the sound of the waves.  He was prepared to ignore it when Harry, pointing toward South Peterborough, called his name.

Sherlock followed her gaze.  John’s Hobie Cat was directly to starboard, close hauled and moving at top speed, gaining swiftly.  John stood on the starboard hull.  At the present rate of sail, the two boats would collide in scant moments, with John crushed between.  The Raven was fast and maneuverable in open water, but in harbor she was no match for the nimble catamaran.  If Sherlock pushed her hard to port, she would be out of the channel and up on the breakwater.  The two boats might still collide.  His only choice was to depower the sail and hope John’s boat would pass off the bow.

Sherlock tightened the outhaul and spilled the mainsail, the Raven slowing dramatically as a result.  It looked for a moment that the strategy had succeeded, but the fickle wind had other ideas.  A gust shifted slightly to the west and strengthened and the catamaran accelerated.  John, managing the tiller, couldn’t shift forward.  As Sherlock watched in horror, the port hull dug forward into a swell and in a heartbeat, the cat began to cartwheel. Both hulls came clear out of the water even as the mast descended like a twirled baton. John was thrown up into the air, still attached to the trapeze.  The topsail and mast float were driven into the water by the momentum and both hulls lay directly in the path of the Raven.  In an instant, the light fiberglass was crushed like eggshell by the keel of the larger boat and pushed below the water’s surface.

Sherlock had known fury, hatred, dread and grief, but never before had he known terror like this.  He could hear the pieces of the Hobie Cat drag along the Raven’s hull.  In the predawn light, there was no sign of John amid the ruin. 

It came to him as in a dream, this was the answer; this was the conclusion of the endless cycle that had been his life.  He would join John beneath the dark water and find him, dead or alive.  He would struggle for the surface and most likely they would drown together and it would be over. 

Sherlock threw off his coat and placed his foot on the rail to step up when a loud splash to his left caught his eye.  Harriet was already in the water.  “Throw me a lifeline,” she was screaming.  “Throw me a bloody lifeline!”

Sherlock leapt to grab a line, throwing the loop of the free end to Harriet while checking that the other was fast in a cleat.  She threw the loop over a shoulder and dove, pulling herself down hand over hand through the flotsam now bobbing silently around them.  Sherlock felt the line pay out, two meters, four, twelve, twenty, and then it went still.  His heart stammering and his vision going dark, all of his senses were concentrated on the slack rope in his hands.

A lifetime passed.  Ever so faintly, the rope across his palms twitched, like a small bird stunned by an impact.  Sherlock was certain it had been an illusion caused by his own jerking pulse, but then it twitched again followed by a hard pull.

Sherlock hauled on the rope, shoving the slack into a jam cleat as he pulled hard and fast.  Two dark heads broke the surface and he heard one desperate gasp of breath.  “Lifebouy!” he yelled, to gain her attention.  As soon as her head snatched up, he threw the ring toward her.  “He’s unconscious,” she panted, “watch how you haul…” and she shoved the ring over John’s shoulders and wrapped the line around his arms.

“Here’s the ladder,” responded Sherlock, throwing it over.  “Hang on ‘til I get him aboard.”

In seconds fueled by adrenaline, first John and then Harriet joined Sherlock on the deck.  Sherlock noticed the prosthetic foot was missing as he checked John’s airway and forced two full breaths into the man’s lungs.  Before he could begin chest compressions, John spasmed and gasped beneath him, rolling to his side and vomiting seawater and then pulling himself to his knees. 

Harriet dove to his side, shoving Sherlock aside.  “You stupid fucker!” she screamed at John.  “You stupid, stupid little fucker!  What the fucking hell were you thinking?”

From his hands and knees, John replied, “Wasn’t.  Wasn’t thinking.  Just couldn’t think.  Had to get here.”  He panted hard and crawled to the mast to sit up.  From there he stared at his sister.  “You saved me, Harriet.  You saved my life.”  The deck fell silent and then one of the bell buoys tolled nearby.  John turned to Sherlock, “Shouldn’t you grab that tiller?” he asked.

Sherlock turned the boat away from the breakwater and back into the bay of the harbor.  He took a shuddering breath and asked, “What happened down there?  Was it the trapeze harness?”

“No,” answered John.  “The quick release on the harness worked like a charm.  The problem was the tiller line.  I let go when the hulls lifted and the line snagged around my foot.  It got tangled in that bicycle seat and I got pulled under with the hull, despite the pfd.  By the time I unstrapped my foot, I was so short of air I couldn’t find the surface.  I was trapped underneath the sail when Harry found me; I passed out.”

“I should have left your sorry arse down there,” Harriet growled.  “This was not the plan.  You are supposed to stay in Peterborough and take care of Da and the business, get married, be a doctor, make grandchildren.  That’s the plan!  What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s time for me to leave Peterborough, Harry.  It’s time for you to leave as well, but maybe not on board this ship.  There are things out there that are better for you, better choices for you.”

“And who will take care of Da?  What happens to Watson and Company?”

“Da takes care of Da!  He’s not an invalid and he’s not senile.  Look, I talked to Da and Ewan.  They’re both ready to give it up.  They’re selling the _Cunnartach._ The sale will pay off the Watson and Company debts.  I’m selling the practice to Mary and Molly.  They’ll pay in monthly installments that will go directly to Da to help with his bills.  You can decide what you want to do with Watson and Company.  You can keep the warehouse and the restaurant sales business or sell the lot.  It’s your choice, Harry.”

“You’re selling the boat and the practice,” she repeated, in shock.

John pulled himself up, leaning on the mast for support.  “You saved my life, Harry,” he repeated.  ”If you’ve been keeping score, I want to make it square.  Can we do that?  Can we call it even and start again, just let each other go a bit?”

“I could go to Edinburgh,” she said.  “I’ve got contacts with restaurants in Edinburgh, or I could go back to school.”

“You can do whatever you want Harry.  You can start now.”

Harry turned back to face the town where she grew up.  The Raven was nearly back to the quay.  The limn of sun was just breaking the horizon and the rooftops above the harbor were gilded with light.  The gulls set up the usual squawk as workers arrived at the pier.  She turned to John.  “What will you do?” she asked quietly.

“I can’t make that decision alone,” said John.  “It’s not just up to me.”  He turned to face the tall captain.  “What will we do, Sherlock?  I was so furious when I woke up and you were gone, I couldn’t think straight.  Look, I get that this is a risk.  I get that it’s always easier to be the one who leaves instead of the one who is left.  I get that you were left before, but you didn’t even give me a bloody chance!”

“A chance is exactly what I’m trying to give you, a chance for something better.  I don’t know how to do this, John!  I’ll get it wrong.  I’ll get it wrong over and over again.”

“Yeah, you will, and so will I, and we’ll yell and we’ll get angry and maybe we’ll throw things or not talk.  It happens.  And then I’ll make you tea and you’ll say something snarky and I’ll laugh and we’ll start over.  I believe in you, Sherlock Holmes.  I believe in us.  Sailing with you, living with you is the richest life I can imagine.  I want this!  Will you really send me back ashore?  I asked you before to give us a chance.  I’m not too proud to beg.”

Sherlock shook his head, struggling to believe this possibility was real.  “John, for ninety-one years, almost every day has been predictable, without variation or choice.  If you stay aboard, I have no idea what happens next.  The Raven has been enchanted.  I don’t know what will happen when the enchantment is lifted.  Maybe I’ll age ninety-one years overnight.  Maybe I’ll die.  Maybe I’ll sail off to some fey harbor where my great, great grandmother awaits.  I have absolutely no idea.  It could be dangerous.”

“God, I hope so,” said John, fervently.  “Anything is better than day after day of tetanus vaccinations, arthritis and high blood pressure, even the boring old fairies,” and then he gave a grin broad enough to split his face in two.  “So I can stay?”

“I think you are the maddest idiot I have ever met.  I guess you had better stay with me or someone else will take advantage of you.  You’ll need to go back ashore to pack if you’re coming with.”

“My stuff is already stashed below.  I packed yesterday after I left you at the Rose and Thorns.  I gave my duffle and med kit to Ross to bring aboard, along with some of my tools, before I went back to the inn.  I texted him this morning to meet me at the quay and bring my posh foot. I was hoping we would could go back and I could grab it then, but…”

“You had your gear stowed yesterday?” sputtered Sherlock.

“I told you Wednesday in the middle of Broad Street that you should bring me aboard.  Last night only strengthened my resolve.  Now would you get over here and give me a hand so I can stop clinging to this bloody mast?”

“John Watson,” Sherlock pronounced, striding across the deck, “You are 11 stone of pure wonder.”

“I’m nearly 12 stone fully dressed, I’ll have you know, so don’t be thinking you can cart me around like a maiden.”

“Well, not when you’re fully dressed, but I can wait,” said Sherlock, sliding his arm around the small man’s waist.

“Oi!” yelled Harry.  “Can you hold off until I’m ashore, at least!” 

Ross and Ken were both waiting on the quay when The Raven pulled up.  Sherlock helped John down the gangplank as Harriet called her father about the adjustment in plans.  James Watson joined them as Harry’s things were loaded back in the utility cart. 

“So,” said James to John, “You talked him into it then?”

“Seems so,” replied John.

James turned to Sherlock and gave him a long look.  “He called Tuesday night and told me he wanted to sail with you on the Raven, after we met in the office.  I hope you know what you’re getting into.  He’s a stubborn little shit and doesn’t give up until he has what he wants.  Cussed stubborn he is.”

“I’m beginning to understand that, yes,” said Sherlock.  “I think I may have underestimated that element earlier.”

“His mother was the same.  Didn’t say much.  Listened and listened and listened and then did exactly what she thought was right.  So, come back and we’ll share a pint and commiserate.”  Then, to Sherlock’s total shock, James Watson hugged him.

Harriet watched with amusement as her bear-like father engulfed the slender captain.  She started when John spoke to her.  “You could come with us, you know.  If you want to leave Peterborough today, we’ll just put your things back aboard.”

“Me and His Majesty and you all crowded on one boat?  I don’t think so.”

“Well, I suspect the forward cabin will be free,” said John with a sly grin.  “Besides, you were ready to sail this morning…”

Harriet narrowed her eyes and weighed her words before she spoke, “You don’t know, do you?  He didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Sherlock looked at our books.  I was borrowing money from the company, John.  I was hoping to get out and I never talked about it with Da or you, but I was planning to borrow enough to start a business in Edinburgh or Glasgow.  I’m sorry, I should have told you.  I never expected Da to retire, to give up fishing, so I…”  She left a long pause before concluding, “Sherlock was going to tell Lestrade I was embezzling from the company if I didn’t go with him.”

“Christ, Harry, I didn’t know!  He shouldn’t have...” but John trialed off, considering Sherlock’s deductions about Harriet’s resentment and depression, about the longliner, about John’s safety.

“I shouldn’t have what?” asked Sherlock, appearing at John’s shoulder.

John looked up into the guarded face, seeing anxiety lurking in the storm grey eyes.

“We should have talked more,” John answered.  “We should have talked so I could have helped you understand just how much I want to go with you and why.  You shouldn’t have tried to plan it out without all of the facts.”

Sherlock considered in silence before nodding sharply in assent.  “More facts are always useful, certainly.  Perhaps now we’ll have time to avail ourselves of them.”  Turning to Harriet, he said, “John suggested you join us.  I won’t forbid it if that is what you both want.”

Harriet laughed out loud.  “If you think you’ll be forbidding him anything, you’ve got a steep learning curve ahead of you!  Thanks for the generous offer, but I think I’ll help Da close up shop.  We’ll do it the right way.  We can make this work.”

John pulled his sister into a silent hug, trying to pour all his trust and love into the gesture.  After a bit, she pushed away, saying, “Somebody told me you should get underway before the tide falls.  Why are you still here?”

There was another round of hugs and then Harriet, James, Ken and Ross turned to the Watson and Company offices.  The two younger men had a plan for buying the _Cunnartach_ and turning her into a whale watch vessel with some sport fishing charters on the side.  John sagged with relief at the thought it wasn’t his decision.  His future lay elsewhere. 

Sherlock and John turned back to the gangplank of the Raven only to find their way blocked by a pile of rags disguised as a woman.  Doctor instincts rose to the surface as John evaluated the grey skin, the snaggled teeth, estimating age and then Sherlock said, “Hello, Grandmother.”

“Hello, Child.  It seems we finally have something to discuss.  Will you give me a ride to the lighthouse? We can talk as we sail.”

Sherlock tensed visibly, but smiled none-the-less.  “It would be our pleasure,” he said, gesturing to the Raven.

Her appearance changed as she moved ahead of them.  By the time John was aboard, he was staring at a tall woman of indeterminate age.  Like Sherlock, she was willowy and slender but far from delicate.  She shared his high cheekbones, almond eyes and dark wavy hair.  John examined her frankly as she waved her hands at the lines securing the Raven to the wharf.  They loosened from the cleats and curled delicately into place as a light breeze caught the sails and pushed the boat back out into the harbor.

She turned to John and began in a flute like voice, “Doctor Watson, known as John.  Will you give me your true name so that I may share the enchantments of my world with you?”

“John has no need of your enchantments,” interjected Sherlock. 

“There has been a marked improvement in your temperament, and yet your manners still need work, I see,” said the Sith.  “I was not speaking to you, Child.”

“My Lady,” said John, offering a shallow bow, “if you please, I think you know my true name and have the advantage.  What may I call you?”

“Cleverly played, Doctor, but kenning a name and being offered it are two different things, as I suspect you know. For my part, you may call me Nerissa and I give you my word to come if you call me so.  You have captured the attention and I think perhaps the heart of the only true child of mine left in this world.  I would offer you what protection I can, as I have protected him, if you will share your name.”

“Protection?” blurted Sherlock.  “Is that what you call the last ninety-one years?  Call it a trial, call it torture, call it entrapment!  How can you call this curse a protection?”

“You are here among the living, healthy and strong and ready to embrace the lover you have sought for a century.  Are you so displeased with the outcome?”

Sensing that Sherlock’s nose might be about to leave his visage, John laid one hand on the tall man’s wrist and pulled lightly, turning them face-to-face.  “Are you displeased?” John asked, gently.

Patience, acceptance and affection all welled, clear and warm in John’s blue eyes.  Suddenly, ninety-one years of waiting seemed much less important than whatever lay before them.  “I am more than pleased,” said Sherlock.  “My mistake, Grandmother.”

“You’re welcome.  You have too much pride for a human, Child, but that may be my fault, so I am hard pressed to condemn you for it.  You would do well at court among the Fey, until you caused too deep an offense and were turned into an African porcupine or possibly a wild boar, so I think we shall still avoid that.”  Turning back to John, she continued, “You they would turn into a terrier, a border terrier I think.  Will you give me your name?”

“Jean-Jacques Watson is my name, Nerissa, though I share it with you warily, to be truthful.”

“Wariness is a useful trait in those charged with protection.  So, Jean-Jacques Watson, will you cleave to my prickly child and protect him in this world when I cannot?  Will you suffer his rudeness and impulsive ways?  Will you love him down to his very bones?”

John knew a vow when he heard one and took a deep breath before he said, “I will hold fast to him so long as he will have me, and some time beyond, I swear.”

“And you, child of my heart, will you take this small, fierce, stubborn man and slow your steps and speech for him, that you may walk side by side?  Will you respect his thoughts as well as his loyalty?  Will you love him down to his very bones?”

Sherlock took John around the waist and pulled him close.  “I will, Grandmother, so long as I have breath.”

“The spell of cycles is broken,” declared Nerissa, “although you will find that old habits die hard for a boat as clever as the _Corbeau Rapide_.  Time will still flow slowly while you are at sea together, but you may sail her where you wish and stay ashore at your pleasure.  She still has a mind of her own, so treat her with respect.  Fare you well, children.  Call on me if you have something entertaining to share with me.”

The Raven had drawn alongside the Peterborough Light at the mouth of the harbor.  The sun glinted off the glass and mirrors of the beacon as Nerissa stepped to the rail and in a flash, she was gone.

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Sherlock stood at the binnacle, comparing electronic nautical charts on the purloined tablet with paper copies in his chart books.  John lolled on the bench at the tiller, watching him.  “We got that tablet for Da last Christmas and loaded the North Sea and the Channel in, but he never took to it.  Glad to see it getting some use.”

“Hmmm, lucky I acquired a generator two cycles ago or it would be jetsam in 24 hours.”

“Lucky you put a generator and a fridge in or there would be no cold beer.  Oi, and we’d have tinned milk for tea every day.  Let’s keep clear priorities here.”

“Cold beer and fresh milk on a sailing ship, you are high maintenance.  You’ll be wanting something other than beans on toast for supper next.”

“Be quiet, you love it.  Now you have someone to complain about and to.  Where are we headed then, since it seems The Void is off the immediate itinerary?”

“How would you feel about London?  I haven’t been there in nearly a century.”

“Bit expensive,” mused John.  “Do we have any assets besides some antique baubles, a vintage yacht and the blessings of a banshee?”

“Once upon a time, I had a fairly fat bank account and trust fund,” answered Sherlock.

“Your family must have taken that over by now.”

“I’m sure they declared me dead, and if I had died intestate, you’d be right, but I had a very legal will made up the summer we went to sail at Cowes.  Jean-Jacques was quite distressed we couldn’t have any legal recognition or security, and I really did want him to have the freedom to paint, so I had him and any of his male offspring declared my beneficiaries, a sexist but conventional arrangement at the time.  I thought it would reassure him.  We might need to find a solicitor to negotiate for us, but I believe that makes you and James my heirs.  It’s worth a few days of investigation, at least.”

“You really are amazing, you know.  You hide so much sentiment under that porcelain skin.”  John reached out and captured one graceful hand, pulling his lover close.  Sherlock brought the other hand to John’s face, running a thumb over the chapped lips and then bending down to bury his face in John’s neck.   He stood slowly, staring at his small miracle, far more amazing than any fairy magic.

“Not so very much sentiment,” answered Sherlock,  “but maybe enough, for you?”

“Just precisely enough,” said John with a smile.  “Now sit down here so I don’t have to crane my neck when you kiss me.”  And Sherlock did.

 

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Thank you for reading and a deep gratitude to all who took the time for comments and kudos.  Your comments made my weeks immeasurably better!

Until the next time…

**Author's Note:**

> This work, for all its flaws, is a gift to the writers of this fandom who have given me so many hours of pleasure. It is my intention to update about once a week. Please send me a note when you find errors.


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